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GIFT 
JUL   10   1913 


THE  CASE 
FOR  INDIA 


PRESIDENTIAL  ADDRESS  TO  THE 
INDIAN  NATIONAL  CONGRESS.  AT 
ITS  THIRTY-SECOND  ANNUAL 
SESSION.  CALCUTTA.  DECEMBER 
26.    1917. 


ANNIE 
BESANT 


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^<  H  E  Thirty-second  Annual 
^^  Session  of  India's  great 
popular  assembly,  the  Indian 
National  Congress  was  held  at 
Calcutta,  Dec.  26,  1917. 

Nearly  five  thousand  delegates 
attended  from  all  parts  of  India, 
and  there  were  sixteen  thousand 
people  present  in  all. 

Sir  Rabindranath  Tagore  com- 
posed and  recited  an  ode  for  the 
occasion. 

Mrs.  Besant  delivered  the 
presidential  address  to  the  en- 
thusiastic assembly.  Her  recom- 
rhendatioius'  we're,  adopted  unani- 
m:o>i'$ly.'  *:  •    .  /.  *  '. 


THIRTY-SECOND  INDIAN  NATlOl^fAL  CONGRESS 


THE  CALCUTTA  SESSION 


THE  PRESIDENTIAL  ADDRESS 

BY 

ANNIE  BESANT 


FELLOW  DELEGATES  AND  FRIENDS:- 

Everyone  who  has  preceded 
me  in  this  Chair  has  rendered  his  thanks  in  fitting  terms  for  the 
gift  which  is  truly  said  to  be  the  highest  that  India  has  it  in 
her  power  to  bestow.  It  is  the  sign  of  her  fullest  love,  trust, 
and  approval,  and  the  one  whom  she  seats  in  that  chair  is,  for 
his  year  of  service,  her  chosen  leader.  But  if  my  predecessors 
found  fitting  words  for  their  gratitude,  in  what  words  can  I 
voice  mine,  whose  debt  to  you  is  so  overwhelmingly  greater  than 
theirs?  For  the  first  time  in  Congress  history,  you  have  chosen 
as  your  President  one  who,  when  your  choice  was  made,  was 
under  the  heavy  ban  of  Government  displeasure,  and  who  lay 
interned  as  a  person  dangerous  to  public  safety.  While  I  was 
humiliated,  you  crowned  me  with  honour;  while  I  was  slan- 
dered, you  believed  in  my  integrity  and  good  faith;  while  I  was 
crushed  under  the  heel  of  bureaucratic  power,  you  acclaimed 
me  as  your  leader;  while  I  was  silenced  and  unable  to  defend 
myself,  you  defended  me,  and  won  for  me  release.  I  was  proud 
to  serve  in  lowliest  fashion,  but  you  lifted  me  up  and  placed  me 
before  the  world  as  your  chosen  representative.  I  have  no  words 
with  which  to  thank  you,  no  eloquence  with  which  to  repay  my 
debt.  My  deeds  must  speak  for  me,  for  words  are  too  poor.  I 
turn  your  gift  into  service  to  the  Motherland;  I  consecrate  my 
life  anew  to  her  in  worship  by  action.  All  that  I  have  and  am, 
I  lay  on  the  Altai*  of  the  Mother,  and  together  we  shall  cry, 
more  by  service  than  by  words:  Vande  ]Vl9,taram. 

There  is,  perhaps,  one  value  in  your  election  of  me  in  this 
crisis  of  India's  destiny,  seeing  that  I  have  not  the  privilege  to 
be  Indian-born,  but  come  from  that  little  Island  in  the  northern 
seas  which  has  been,  in  the  West,  the  builder  up  of  free  institu- 


380045 


tions.  The  Aryan  einigrantsi  who  spread  over  the  lands  of 
Europe/c^rried,  with"  theni  the  seeds  of  liberty  sown  in  their 
blood  in  their  .Aai*n  cx-adle-land.  Western  historians  trace  the 
self  rule  of  the  Saxon  villages  to  their  earlier  prototypes  in  the 
East,  and  see  the  growth  of  English  liberty  as  up  springing 
from  the  Aryan  root  of  the  free  and  self-contained  village 
communities. 

Its  growth  was  crippled  by  Norman  feudalism  there,  as  its 
millennia  nourished  security  here  was  smothered  by  the  East 
India  Company.  But  in  England  it  burst  its  shackles  and  nur- 
tured a  liberty-loving  people,  and  a  free  Commons'  House.  Here, 
it  similarly  burgeoned  out  into  the  Congress  activities,  and  more 
recently  into  those  of  the  Muslem  League,  now  together  blossom- 
ing into  Home  Rule  for  India.  The  England  of  Milton,  Cromwell, 
Sydney,  Burke,  Paine,  Shelley,  Wilberforce,  Gladstone;  the  Eng- 
land tliat  sheltered  Mazzini,  Kossuth,  Kropotkin,  Siepniak,  and 
that  welcomed  Garibaldi;  the  England  that  is  the  enemy  of 
tyranny,  the  foe  of  autocracy,  the  lover  of  freedom,  that  is  the 
England  I  would  fain  here  represent  to  you  today.  Today  when 
India  stands  erect,  no  suppliant  people,  but  a  Nation,  self- 
conscious,  self-respecting,  determined  to  be  free;  when  she 
stretches  out  her  hand  to  Britain  and  offers  friendship  not  sub- 
servience, co-operation  not  obedience;  today  let  me,  western 
born  but  in  spirit  eastern,  cradled  in  England  but  Indian  by 
choice  and  adoption,  let  me  stand  as  the  symbol  of  union  be- 
tween Great  Britain  and  India,  a  union  of  heart  and  free  choice, 
not  of  compulsion,  and  therefore  of  a  tie  which  cannot  be 
broken,  a  tie  of  love  and  of  mutual  helpfulness,  beneficial  to 
both  Nations  and  blessed  by  God. 

Gone  to  the  Peace 
India's  great  leader,  Dadabhai  Naoroji,  has  left  his  mortal 
body  and  is  now  one  of  the  company  of  the  Immortals,  who 
watch  over  and  aid  India's  progress.  He  is  with  W.  C.  Bon- 
nerjee,  and  Ranade,  and  A.  O.  Hume,  and  Henry  Cotton,  and 
Paerozeshah  Mehta,  and  Gopal  Krishna  Gokhale — the  great  men 
who,  in  Swinburne's  noble  verse,  are  the  stars  which  lead  us  to 
Liberty's  Altar: 

These,  O  men,  shall  ye  honour. 

Liberty  only  and  these. 
For  thy  sake  and  for  all  men's  and  mine. 
Brother,  the  crowns  of  them  shine, 
Lighting  the  way  to  her  shrine, 
That  our  eyes  may  be  fastened  upon  her, 
That  our  hands  may  encompass  her  Jinees. 
Not  for  me  to  praise  him  in  feeble  words  of  reverence  and  of 
homage.     His  deeds  praise  him,  and  his  service  to  his  Country 
is  his  abiding  glory.     Our  gratitude  will  be  best  paid  by  follow- 
ing in  his  footsteps,  alike  in  his  splendid  courage  and  his  un- 
faltering devotion,  so  that  we  may  win  the  Home  Rule  which 


he  longed  to  see  while  with  us,  and  shall  see,  ere  long,  from  the 
other  world  of  Life,  in  which  he  dwells  today. 

The  Wae  and  Pbe-War  Military  Expenditure 
The  Great  War,  into  the  whirlpool  of  which  Nation  after 
Nation  has  been  drawn,  has  entered  on  its  fourth  year.  The 
rigid  censorship  which  has  been  established  makes  it  impossible 
for  any  outside  the  circle  of  Governments  to  forecast  its  dura- 
tion, but  to  me,  speaking  for  a  moment  not  as  a  politician  but 
as  a  student  of  spiritual  laws,  to  me  its  end  is  sure.  For  the 
true  object  of  this  War  is  to  prove  the  evil  of,  and  to  destroy 
autocracy  and  the  enslavement  of  one  Nation  by  another,  and  to 
place  on  sure  foundations  the  God-given  Right  to  Self-Rule  and 
Self-Development  of  every  Nation,  and  the  similar  right  of  the 
Individual,  of  the  smaller  Self,  so  far  as  is  consistent  with  the 
welfare  of  the  larger  Self  of  the  Nation.  The  forces  which  make 
for  the  prolongation  of  autocracy — the  rule  of  one — and  the  even 
deadlier  bureaucracy — the  rule  of  a  close  body  welded  into  an 
iron  system — these  have  been  gathered  together  in  the  Central 
Powers  of  Europe — as  of  old  in  Ravana — in  order  that  they  may 
be  destroyed;  for  the  New  Age  cannot  be  opened  until  the  Old 
passes  away.  The  new  civilisation  of  righteousness,  and  justice, 
and  therefore  of  Brotherhood,  of  ordered  Liberty,  of  Peace,  of 
Happiness,  cannot  be  built  up  until  the  elements  are  removed 
which  have  brought  the  old  civilisation  crashing  about '^our  ears. 
Therefore  is  it  necessary  that  the  War  shall  be  fought  out  to 
its  appointed  end,  and  that  no  premature  peace  shall  leave  its 
object  unattained.  Autocracy  and  bureaucracy  must  perish 
utterly,  in  East  and  West,  and,  in  order  that  their  germs  may 
not  re-sprout  in  the  future,  they  must  be  discredited  in  the 
minds  of  men.  They  must  be  proved  to  be  less  efficient  than 
the  Government  of  Free  Peoples,  even  in  their  favourite  game  of 
War  and  their  iron  machinery — which  at  first  brings  outer  pros- 
perity and  success — must  be  shown  to  be  less  lasting  and  effec- 
tive than  the  living  and  flexible  organisations  of  democratic 
peoples.  They  must  be  proved  Failures  before,  the  world,  so  that 
the  glamour  of  superficial  successes  may  be  destroyed  forever. 
They  have  had  their  day  and  their  place  in  evolution,  and  have 
done  their  educative  work.  Now  they  are  out-of-date,  unfit  for 
survival,  and  must  vanish  away. 

When  Great  Britain  sprang  to  arms,  it  was  in  defence  of  the 
freedom  of  a  small  Nation,  guaranteed  by  treaties,  and  the  great 
principles  she  proclaimed  electrified  India  and  the  Dominions. 
They  all  sprang  to  her  side  without  question,  without  delay; 
they  heard  the  voice  of  old  England,  the  soldier  of  Liberty,  and 
it  thrilled  their  hearts.  All  were  unprepared,  save  the  small 
territorial  army  of  Great  Britain,  due  to  the  genius  and  fore- 
sight of  Lord  Haldane,  and  the  readily  mobilized  army  of  India, 
hurled  into  the  fray  by  the  swift  decision  of  Lord  Hardinge. 


The  little  army  of  Britain  fought  for  time,  fought  to  stop  the 
road  to  Paris,  the  heart  of  France,  fought,  falling  back  step  by 
step,  and  gained  the  time  it  fought  for,  till  India's  sons  stood 
on  the  soil  of  France,  were  flung  to  the  front,  rushed  past  the 
exhausted  regiments  who  cheered  them  with  failing  breath, 
charged  the  advancing  hosts,  stopped  the  retreat,  and  joined  the 
British  army  in  forming  that  unbreakable  line  which  wrestled 
to  the  death  through  two  fearful  winters — often,  these  soldiers 
of  the  tropics,  waist-deep  in  freezing  mud — and  knew  no  sur- 
render. 

India,  with  her  clear  vision,  saw  in  Great  Britain  the  cham- 
pion of  Freedom,  in  Germany  the  champion  of  despotism.  And 
she  saw  rightly.  Rightly  she  stood  by  Great  Britain,  despite  her 
own  lack  of  freedom  and  the  coercive  legislation  which  out- 
rivalled  German  despotism,  knowing  these  to  be  temporary,  be- 
cause un-English,  and  therefore  doomed  to  destruction;  she 
spurned  the  lure  of  German  gold  and  rejected  German  appeals 
to  revolt.  She  offered  men  and  money;  her  educated  classes,  her 
Vakils,  offered  themselves  as  Volunteers,  pleaded  to  be  accepted. 
Then  the  never-sleeping  distrust  of  Anglo-India  rejected  the 
offer,  pressed  for  money,  rejected  men.  And,  slowly,  educated 
India  sank  back,  depressed  and  disheartened,  and  a  splendid  op- 
portunity for  knitting  together  the  two  Nations  was  lost. 

Early  in  the  War  I  ventured  to  say  that  the  War  could  not 
end  untfl  England  recognised  that  autocracy  and  bureaucracy 
must  perish  in  India  as  well  as  in  Europe,  The  good  Bishop  of 
Calcutta,  with  a  courage  worthy  of  his  free  race,  lately  declared 
that  it  would  be  hypocritical  to  pray  for  victory  over  autocracy 
in  Europe  and  to  maintain  it  in  India.  Now,  it  has  been  clearly 
and  definitely  declared  that  Self-Government  is  to  be  the  ob- 
jective of  Great  Britain  in  India,  and  that  a  substantial  measure 
of  it  is  to  be  given  at  once;  when  this  promise  is  made  good  by 
the  granting  of  the  Reforms  outlined  last  year  in  Lucknow,  then 
the  end  of  the  War  will  be  in  sight.  For  the  War  cannot  end 
till  the  death-knell  of  autocracy  is  sounded. 

Causes,  with  which  I  will  deal  presently  and  for  which  India 
was  not  responsible,  have  somewhat  obscured  the  first  eager 
expressions  of  India's  sympathy,  and  have  forced  her  thoughts 
largely  towards  her  own  position  in  the  Empire.  But  that  does 
not  detract  from  the  immense  aid  she  has  given,  and  is  still 
giving.  It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  long  before  the  present 
War,  she  had  submitted — at  first,  while  she  had  no  power  of 
remonstrance,  and  later,  after  1885,  despite  the  constant  pro- 
tests of  Congress — to  an  ever-rising  military  expenditure,  due 
partly  to  the  amalgamation  scheme  of  1859,  and  partly  to 
the  cost  of  various  Wars  beyond  her  frontiers,  and  to  continually 
recurring  frontier  and  trans-frontier  expeditions,  in  which  she 
had  no  real  interest.  They  were  sent  out  for  supposed  Imperial 
advantages,  not  for  her  own. 


Between  1859  and  1904 — 45  years — Indian  troops  were  engaged 
in  thirty-seven  wars  and  expeditions.  There  were  ten  Wars:  the 
two  Chinese  Wars  of  1860  and  1900,  the  Bhutan  War  of  1864-65, 
the  Abyssinian  War  of  1868,  the  Afghan  War  of  1878-79,  and, 
after  the  massacre  of  the  Kabul  Mission,  the  second  War  of 
1879-80,  ending  in  an  advance  of  the  frontier,  in  the  search  for 
an  ever  receding  "scientific  frontier";  on  this  occasion  the  fron- 
tier was  shifted,  says  Keene,  "from  the  line  of  the  Indus  to  the 
western  slope  of  the  Suleiman  range  and  from  Peshawar  to 
Quetta,"  the  Egyptian  War  of  1882,  in  which  the  Indian  troops 
markedly  distinguished  themselves;  the  third  Burmese  War  of 
1885  ending  in  the  annexation  of  Upper  Burma  in  1886;  the  in- 
vasions of  Tibet  in  1890  and  1904.  Of  Expeditions,  or  minor 
Wars,  there  were  27;  to  Sitana  in  1858  on  a  small  scale  and  in 
1863  on  a  larger  (the  "Sitana  Campaign";  to  Nepal  and  Sikkim 
in  1859;  to  Sikkim  in  1864;  a  serious  struggle  on  the  North- 
west Frontier  in  1868;  expeditions  against  the  Lushais  in  1871- 
72,  the  Defias  in  1874-75,  the  Nagas  in  1875,  the  Afridis  in  1877, 
the  Rampa  Hill  tribes  in  1879,  the  Waziris  and  Nagas  in  1881, 
the  Akhas  in  1884,  and  in  the  same  year  an  expedition  to  the 
Zhob  Valley,  and  a  second  thither  in  1890.  In  1888  and  89, 
there  was  another  expedition  against  Sikkim,  against  the 
Akozais  (the  Black  Mountain  expedition)  and  against  the  Hill 
Tribes  of  the  North  East,  and  in  1890  another  Black  Mountain 
Expedition,  with  a  third  in  1892.  In  1890  came  the  expedition  to 
Manipur,  and  in  1891,  there  was  another  expedition  against  the 
Lushais,  and  one  into  the  Miratzal  Valley.  The  Central  expedi- 
tion occupied  1894-95  and  the  serious  Tirah  Campaign,  in  which 
40,000  men  were  engaged,  came  in  1897  and  1898.  The  long 
list — which  I  have  closed  with  1904 — ends  with  the.  expeditions 
against  the  Mahsuds  in  1901,  against  the  Kabalta  in  1902,  and 
the  invasion  of  Tibet,  before  noted.  All  these  events  explain  the 
rise  in  military  expenditure,  and  we  must  add  to  them  the  send- 
ing of  Indian  troops  to  Malta  and  Cyprus  in  1878 — a  some- 
what theatrical  demonstration — and  the  expenditure  of  some 
£2,000,000,  to  face  what  was  described  as  "the  Russian  Menace" 
in  1884.  Most  of  these  were  due  to  Imperial,  not  to  Indian 
policy,  and  many  of  the  burdens  imposed  were  protested  against 
by  the  Government  of  India,  while  others  were  encouraged  by 
ambitious  Viceroys.  I  do  not  think  that  even  this  long  list  is 
complete. 

Ever  since  the  Government  of  India  was  taken  over  by  the 
Crown,  India  has  been  regarded  as  an  Imperial  military  asset 
and  training  ground,  a  position  from  which  the  jealousy  of  the 
East  India  Company  had  largely  protected  her,  by  insisting  that 
the  army  it  supported  should  be  used  for  the  defence  and  in  the 
interests  of  India  alone.  Her  value  to  the  Empire  for  military 
purposes  would  not  so  seriously  have  injured  at  once  her  pride 
and  her  finances,  if  the  natural  tendencies  of  her  martial  races 


had  been  permitted  their  previous  scope;  but  the  disarming  of 
the  people,  20  years  after  the  assumption  of  the  Government  by 
the  Crown,  emasculated  the  Nation,  and  the  elimination  of  races 
supposed  to  be  unwarlike,  or  in  some  cases  too  warlike  to  be 
trusted,  threw  recruitment  more  and  more  to  the  north,  and 
lowered  the  physique  of  the  Bengalis  and  Madrasis,  on  whom  the 
Company  had  largely  depended. 

The  superiority  of  the  Punjab,  on  which  Sir  Michael  O'Dwyer 
so  vehemently  insisted  the  other  day,  is  an  artificial  superiority, 
created  by  the  British  system  and  policy;  and  poor  recruitment 
elsewhere,  on  which  he  laid  offensive  insistence,  is  due  to  the 
same  system  and  policy,  which  largely  eliminated  Bengalis, 
Madrasis  and  Mahrattas  from  the  army.  In  Bengal,  however, 
the  martial  type  has  been  revived,  chiefly  in  consequence  of  what 
the  Bengalis  felt  to  be  the  intolerable  insult  of  the  high-handed 
Partition  of  Bengal  by  Lord  Curzon.  On  this  Gopal  Krishna 
Gokhale  said: 

Bengal's  heroic  stand  against  the  oppression  of  a  harsh  and  uncontrolled 
bureaucracy  has  astonished  and  gratified  all  India  ....  All  India 
owes  a  deep  debt  of  gratitude  to  Bengal. 

The  spirit  evoked  showed  itself  in  the  youth  of  Bengal  by  a 
practical  revolt,  led  by  the  elders,  while  it  was  confined  to 
Swadeshi  and  Boycott,  and  rushing  on,  when  it  broke  away 
from  their  authority  into  conspiracy,  assassination  and  dacoity — 
as  had  happened  in  similar  revolts  with  young  Italy,  in  the  days 
of  Mazzini,  and  with  Young  Russia  in  the  days  of  Stepniak  and 
Kropotkin.  The  results  of  their  despair,  necessarily  met  by  the 
halter  and  penal  servitude,  had  to  be  faced  by  Lord  Hardinge 
and  Lord  Carmichael  during  the  present  War.  Other  results, 
happy  instead  of  disastrous  in  their  nature,  was  the  development 
of  grit  and  endurance  of  a  high  character,  shown  in  the  courage 
of  the  Bengal  lads  in  the  serious  floods  that  have  laid  parts  of 
the  Province  deep  under  water,  and  in  their  compassion  and 
self  sacriflce  in  the  relief  of  famine.  Their  services  in  the 
present  War — the  Ambulance  Corps  and  the  replacement  of  its 
materiel  when  the  ship  carrying  it  sank,  with  the  splendid  serv- 
ices rendered  by  it  in  Mesopotamia;  the  recruiting  of  a  Bengali 
regiment  for  active  service,  900  strong,  with  another  900  re- 
serves to  replace  wastage,  and  recruiting  still  going  on — these 
are  instances  of  the  divine  alchemy  which  brings  the  soul  of 
good  out  of  evil  action,  and  consecrates  to  service  the  qualities 
evoked  by  rebellion. 

In  England,  also,  a  similar  result  has  been  seen  in  a  convict, 
released  to  go  to  the  front,  winning  the  Victoria  Cross.  It  would 
be  an  act  of  statesmanship,  as  well  as  of  divinest  compassion,  to 
offer  to  every  prisoner  and  interned  captive,  held  for  political 
crime  or  on  political  suspicion,  the  opportunity  of  serving  the 
Empire  at  the  front.  They  might,  if  thought  necessary,  form  a 
separate  battalion  or  a  separate  regiment,  under  stricter  super- 


vision,  and  yet  be  given  a  chance  of  redeeming  their  reputation, 
for  they  are  mostly  very  young. 

The  financial  burden  incurred  in  consequence  of  the  above 
conflicts,  and  of  other  causes,  now  to  be  mentioned,  would  not 
have  been  so  much  resented,  if  it  had  been  imposed  by  India  on 
herself,  and  if  her  own  sons  had  profited  by  her  being  used  as 
a  training  ground  for  the  Empire.  But  in  this  case,  as  in  so 
many  others,  she  has  shared  Imperial  burdens,  while  not  sharing 
Imperial  freedom  and  power.  Apart  from  this,  the  change  which 
made  the  Army  so  ruinous  a  burden  on  the  resources  of  the 
country  was  the  system  of  "British  reliefs,"  the  using  of  India 
as  a  training  ground  for  British  regiments,  and  the  transfer  of 
the  men  thus  trained,  to  be  replaced  by  new  ones  under  the 
short  service  system,  the  cost  of  the  frequent  transfers  and  their 
connected  expenses  being  charged  on  the  Indian  revenues,  while 
the  whole  advantage  was  reaped  by  Great  Britain.  On  the  short 
service  system  the  Simla  Army  Commission  declared: 

The  short  service  system  recently  introduced  into  the  British  army  has 
increased  the  cost  and  has  materially  reduced  the  efficiency  of  the  British 
troops  in  India.  We  cannot  resist  the  feeling  that,  in  the  introduction  of 
this  system,  the  interest  of  the  Indian  tax-payer  was  entirely  left  out  of 
consideration. 

The  remark  was  certainly  justified,  for  the  short  service  sys- 
tem gave  India  only  five  years  of  the  recruit  she  paid  heavily 
for  and  trained,  all  the  rest  of  the  benefit  going  to  England.  The 
latter  was  enabled,  as  the  years  went  on,  to  enormously  increase 
her  Reserves,  so  that  she  has  had  400,000  men  trained  in,  and 
at  the  cost  of  India. 

In  1863  the  Indian  army  consisted  of  140,000  men,  with  65,000 
white  officers.  Great  changes  were  made  in  1885-1905,  including 
the  reorganization  under  Lord  Kitchener,  who  became  Com- 
mander-in-Chief at  the  end  of  1902.  Even  in  this  hasty  review, 
I  must  not  omit  reference  to  the  fact  that  Army  Stores  were 
drawn  from  Britain  at  enormous  cost,  while  they  should  have 
been  chiefiy  manufactured  here,  so  that  India  might  have 
profited  by  the  expenditure.  Lately,  under  the  necessities  of 
War,  factories  have  been  turned  to  the  production  of  munitions; 
but  this  should  have  been  done  long  ago,  so  that  India  might 
have  been  enriched  instead  of  exploited.  The  War  has  forced 
an  investigation  into  her  mineral  resources,  that  might  have 
been  made  for  her  own  sake,  but  Germany  was  allowed  to  mon- 
opolise the  supply  of  minerals  that  India  could  have  produced 
and  worked  up,  and  would  have  produced  and  worked  up  had 
she  enjoyed  Home  Rule.  India  would  have  been  richer,  and  the 
Empire  safer,  had  she  been  a  partner  instead  of  a  posssseion.  But 
this  side  of  the  question  will  come  under  the  matters  directly 
affecting  merchants,  and  we  may  venture  to  express  a  hope  that 
the  Government  help,  extended  to  munition  factories  in  time  of 
War,  may  be  continued  to  industrial  factories  in  time  of  Peace. 


The  net  result  of  the  various  causes  above  mentioned  was  that 
the  expense  of  the  Indian  army  rose  by  leaps  and  bounds,  until, 
before  the  War,  India  was  expending  £21,000,000  as  against  the 
£28,000,000  expended  by  the  United  Kingdom,  while  the  wealthy 
Dominions  of  Canada  and  Australia  were  spending  only  li/^  and 
li/i  millions,  respectively.  (I  am  not  forgetting  that  the  United 
Kingdom  was  expending  over  £51,000,000  on  her  Navy,  while 
India  was  free  of  that  burden,  save  for  a  contribution  of  half  a 
million.) 

Since  1885,  the  Congress  has  constantly  protested  against  the 
ever-increasing  military  expenditure,  but  the  voice  of  the  Con- 
gress was  supposed  to  be  the  voice  of  sedition  and  of  class  am- 
bition, instead  of  being,  as  it  was,  the  voice  of  educated  Indians, 
the  most  truly  patriotic  and  loyal  class  of  the  population.  In 
1885  in  the  First  Congress  Mr.  P.  Rangiah  Naidu  pointed  out 
that  military  expenditure  had  been  £11,463,000  in  1857  and  had 
risen  to  £16,975,750  in  1884.  Mr.  D.  E.  Wacha  ascribed  the 
growth  to  the  amalgamation  scheme  of  1859,  and  remarked  that 
the  Company  in  1856  had  an  army  of  254,000  men  at  a  cost  of 
111^  millions,  while  in  1884,  the  Crown  had  an  army  of  only 
181,000  men  at  a  cost  of  17  millions.  The  rise  was  largely  due 
to  the  increased  cost  of  the  European  regiments,  overland  trans- 
port service,  stores,  pensions,  furlough  allowances,  and  the  like, 
most  of  them  imposed  against  the  resistance  of  the  Government 
of  India,  which  complained  that  the  changes  were  "made  en- 
tirely, it  may  be  said,  from  Imperial  considerations,  in  which 
Indian  interests  have  not  been  consulted  or  advanced.  India 
paid  nearly  £700,000  a  year,  for  instance,  for  "Home  Depots," 
Home  being  England  of  course^ — in  which  lived  some  20,000  to 
22,000  British  soldiers,  on  the  plea  that  their  regiments,  not 
they,  were  serving  in  India.  I  cannot  follow  out  the  many  in- 
creases cited  by  Mr.  Wacha,  but  members  can  refer  to  his  ex- 
cellent speech. 

Mr.  Fawcett  once  remarked  that  when  the  East  India  Com- 
pany was  abolished. 

The  English  people  became  directly  responsible  for  the  Government  of 
India.  It  cannot,  I  think,  be  denied  that  this  responsibility  has  been  so 
imperfectly  discharged  that  in  many  respects  the  new  system  of  Govern- 
ment compares  unfavourably  with  the  old There  was  at  that 

time  an  independent  control  of  expenditure  which  now  seems  to  be  almost 
entirely  wanting. 

Shortly  after  the  Crown  assumed  the  rule  of  India,  Mr.  Dis- 
raeli asked  the  House  of  Commons  to  regard  India  as  "a  great 
and  solemn  trust  committed  to  it  by  an  all-wise  and  inscrutible 
Providence."  Mr.  George  Yule,  in  the  Fourth  Congress,  re- 
marked on  this:  "The  650  odd  members  had  thrown  the  trust 
back  upon  the  hands  of  Providence,  to  be  looked  after  as  Provi- 
dence itself  thinks  best."  Perhaps  it  is  time  that  India  should 
remember  that  Providence  helps  those  who  help  themselves. 

8 


Year  after  year  the  Congress  continued  to  remonstrate  against 
the  cost  of  the  army,  until  in  1902,  after  all  the  futile  protests 
of  the  intervening  years,  it  condemned  an  increase  of  pay  to 
British  soldiers  in  India  which  placed  an  additional  burden  on 
Indian  revenues  of  £786,000  a  year,  and  pointed  out  that  the 
British  garrison  was  unnecessarily  numerous,  as  was  shown  by 
the  withdrawal  of  large  bodies  of  British  soldiers  for  service  in 
South  Africa  and  China.  The  very  next  year  Congress  pro- 
tested that  the  increasing  military  expenditure  was  not  to  secure 
India  against  internal  disorder  or  external  attack,  but  in  order 
to  carry  out  an  Imperial  policy;  the  Colonies  contributed  little 
or  nothing  to  the  Imperial  Military  Expenditure,  while  India 
bore  the  cost  of  about  one  third  of  the  whole  British  Army  in 
addition  to  her  own  Indian  troops.  Surely,  these  facts  should 
be  remembered  when  India's  military  services  to  the  Empire  are 
now  being  weighed. 

In  1904  and  1905,  the  Congress  declared  that  the  then  military 
expenditure  was  beyond  India's  power  to  bear,  and  in  the  latter 
year  prayed  that  the  additional  ten  millions  sterling,  sanctioned 
for  Lord  Kitchener's  reorganisation  scheme,  might  be  devoted  to 
education  and  the  reduction  of  the  burden  on  the  raiyats.  In 
1908,  the  burdens  imposed  by  the  British  War  OflEice  since  1859 
were  condemned,  and  in  the  next  year  it  was  pointed  out  that 
the  military  expenditure  was  nearly  a  third  of  the  whole  Indian 
revenue,  and  was  starving  Education  and  Sanitation. 

Lord  Kitchener's  reorganisation  scheme  kept  the  Indian  Army 
on  a  War  footing,  ready  for  immediate  mobilisation,  and  on 
January  1,  1915,  the  regular  army  consisted  of  247,000  men,  of 
whom  75,000  were  English;  it  was  the  money  spent  by  India  in 
maintaining  this  army  for  years  in  readiness  for  War,  which 
made  it  possible  for  her  to  go  to  the  help  of  Great  Britain  at 
the  critical  early  period  to  which  I  alluded.  She  spent  over  £20 
millions  on  the  military  services  in  1914-15.  In  1915-16  she  spent 
£21.8  millions.  In  1916-17  her  military  budget  had  risen  to  £22 
millions,  and  it  will  be  largely  exceeded. 

On  this  excess,  the  Viceroy  has  spoken  very  ominously.  For 
the  Indian  War  Loan  (excluding  Treasury  Bills  received  in  Eng- 
land) no  less  than  £32  millions  sterling  have  been  received  and 
more  is  coming  in.  The  proceeds  of  the  Loan  go  to  the  British 
Government  in  London,  as  part  of  India's  special  contribution 
of  £100  millions.  They  have  been  utilised  to  meet  War  expendi- 
ture in  India  and  Mesopotamia  on  behalf  of  the  British  Govern- 
ment.    But  the  Governor-General  says: 

This  War  expenditure  will  greatly  exceed  the  amount  allowed  for  the 
budget  estimates,  which  were  based  on  the  best  data  then  available,  and 
we  now  expect  that  the  excess  will  practically  swallow  up  the  whole  of 
the  amounts  so  far  received  on  account  of  the  Indian  War  t-oan,  over  and 
above  the  £10  millions  assumed  in  the  estimate  for  budget  purposes. 
.     .     .     .     India  Is  the  financial  pivot  of  the  British  Empire  in  the  East 


Thus,  apart  from  the  expenditure  in  India  and  Mesopotamia  to  which  I 
have  just  referred,  she  is  also  undertaking  the  financing  of  large  quan- 
tities of  wheat,  jute,  manufactures,  hides  and  numerous  other  essential 
commodities,  which  she  is  supplying  to  Great  Britain,  to  the  Dominions 
and  to  the  Allied  Governments.  She  is  also  providing  funds  on  a  con- 
siderable scale  fo  East  Africa  and  Persia,  and  has  had  on  various  occa- 
sions to  assist  Ceylon,  Mauritius  and  Egypt  by  remittance  of  specie  and 
otherwise  ;  of  course,  we  receive  repayment  for  these  services,  but  as  it  is 
not  made  in  India  they  necessarily  constitute  a  continuing  tax  on  our 
present  resources  here  (italics  mine). 

The  taxes  levied  to  meet  the  calculated  deficit  will  by  no 
means  suffice  to  fill  up  the  great  gulf  now  yawning  before  us. 
On  whom  will  those  taxes  be  levied?  It  is  not  unlikely  that 
those  Zamindars  who  have  been  allying  themselves  with  officials 
and  English  non-officials  against  their  countrymen,  may  find 
themselves  disappointed  in  their  allies,  and  may  begin  to  realise 
by  personal  experiences  the  necessity  o*f  giving  to  Indian  legis- 
latures, in  which  they  will  be  fully  represented,  control  over 
National  expenditure. 

Lord  Hardinge,  the  last  Viceroy  of  India,  who  is  ever  held  in 
loving  memory  here  for  his  sympathetic  attitude  towards  Indian 
aspirations,  made  a  masterly  exposition  of  India's  War  services 
in  the  House  of  Lords  on  the  third  of  last  July,  He  emphasised 
her  pre- War  services,  showing  that,  though  19 14  millions  ster- 
ling' was  fixed  as  a  maximum  by  the  Nicholson  Committee,  that 
amount  had  been  exceeded  in  11  out  of  the  last  13  budgets,  while 
his  own  last  budget  had  risen  to  22  millions.  During  these  13 
years  the  revenue  had  been  only  between  48  and  58  millions, 
once  rising  to  60  millions.  Could  any  fact  speak  more  eloquently 
of  India's  War  services  than  this  proportion  of  military  expendi- 
ture compared  with  her  revenue? 

The  Great  War  began  on  August  4th,  and  in  that  very  month 
and  in  the  early  part  of  September,  India  sent  an  Expeditionary 
force  of  three  divisions — two  infantry  and  one  cavalry — and 
another  cavalry  division  joined  them  in  Prance  in  November. 
The  first  arrived,  said  Lord  Hardinge,  "in  time  to  fill  a  gap  that 
could  not  otherwise  have  been  filled."  He  added  pathetically: 
"There  are  very  few  survivors  of  those  two  splendid  divisions 
of  infantry."  Truly,  their  homes  are  empty,  but  their  sons  shall 
enjoy  in  India  the  liberty  for  which  their  fathers  died  in  France. 
Three  more  divisions  were  at  once  sent  to  guard  the  Indian 
frontier,  while  in  September  a  mixed  division  was  sent  to  East 
Africa,  and  in  October  and  November  two  more  divisions  and 
a  brigade  of  cavalry  went  to  Egypt.  A  battalion  of  Indian  in- 
fantry went  to  Mauritius,  another  to  the  Cameroons,  and  two 
to  the  Persian  Gulf,  while  other  Indian  troops  helped  the  Jap- 
anese in  the  capture  of  Tsingtau.  210,000  Indians  were  thus 
sent  overseas.  The  whole  of  these  troops  were  fully  armed  and 
equipped,  and  in  addition,  during  the  first  few  weeks  of  the 
War,   India  sent  to  England  from  her  magazines   "70   million 

10 


rounds  of  small  arm  ammunition,  60,000  rifles,  and  more  than 
550  guns  of  the  latest  pattern  and  type." 

In  addition  to  these,  Lord  Hardinge  speaks  of  sending  to 
England 

enormous  quantities  of  material,  ....  tents,  boots,  saddlery, 
clothing,  etc.,  but  every  effort  was  made  to  meet  the  ever-increasing  de- 
mands made  by  the  War  OflBce,  and  it  may  be  stated,  without  exaggeration, 
that  India  was  bled  absolutely  white  during  the  first  few  weeks  of  the 
War. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten,  though.  Lord  Hardinge  has  not 
reckoned  it,  the  all  wastage  has  been  more  than  fitted  up,  and 
450,000  men  represent  this  need;  the  increase  in  units  has  been 
300,000  and  including  other  military  items,  India  had  placed  in 
the  field  up  to  the  end  of  1916  over  a  million  of  men. 

In  addition  to  this  a  British  force  of  80,000  was  sent  from 
India,  fully  trained  and  equipped  at  Indian  cost,  India  receiving 
in  exchange,  many  months  later,  34  Territorial  battalions  and 
29  batteries,  "unfit  for  immediate  employment  on  the  frontier 
or  in  Mesopotamia,  until  they  had  been  entirely  re-armed  and 
equipped,  and  their  training  completed." 

Between  the  autumn  of  1914  and  the  close  of  1915,  the  defence 
of  our  own  frontiers  was  a  serious  matter,  and  Lord  Hardinge 
says: 

The  attitude  of  Afghanistan  was  for  a  long  time  doubtful,  although  I 
always  had  confidence  in  the  personal  loyalty  of  our  ally  the  Amir ;  but  I 
feared  lest  he  might  be  overwhelmed  by  a  wave  of  fanaticism,  or  by  a 
successful  Jehad  of  the  tribes It  suffices  to  mention  that,  al- 
though during  the  previous  three  years  there  had  been  no  operations  of 
any  importance  on  the  North-West  Frontier,  there  were,  between  Nov.  29, 
1914,  and  Sept.  5,  1915.  no  less  than  seven  serious  attacks  on  the  North- 
West  Frontier,  all  of  which  were  effectively  dealt  with. 

The  military  authorities  had  also  to  meet  a  German  conspiracy 
early  in  1915.  7,000  men  arriving  from  Canada  and  the  United 
States,  having  planned  to  seize  points  of  military  vantage  in  the 
Punjab,  and  in  December  of  the  same  year  another  German  con- 
spiracy in  Bengal,  necessitating  military  preparations  on  land, 
and  also  naval  patrols  in  the  Bay  of  Bengal. 

Lord  Hardinge  has  been  much  attacked  by  the  Tory  and 
Unionist  Press  in  England  and  India,  in  England  because  of  the 
Mesopotamia  Report,  in  India  because  his  love  for  India  brought 
him  hatred  from  Anglo-India.  India  has  affirmed  her  confidence 
in  him,  and  with  India's  verdict  he  may  well  rest  satisfied. 

I  do  not  care  to  dwell  on  the  Mesopotamia  Commission  and 
its  condemnation  of  the  bureaucratic  system  prevailing  here. 
Lord  Ha^rdinge  vindicated  himself  and  India.  The  bureaucratic 
system  remains  undefended.  I  recall  that  bureaucratic  inefficiency 
came  out  in  even  more  startling  fashion  in  connection  with  the 
Afghan  war  of  1878-79  and  1879-80.  In  February,  1880,  the  War 
charges  were  reportd  as  under  £4  millions,  and  the  accounts 
showed  a  surplus  of  £2  millions.  On  April  8th,  the  Government 
of  India  reported:     "Out-going  for  War  very  alarming,  far  ex- 

11 


deeding  estimate,"  and  on  the  13th  of  April  It  was  announced 
that  the  cash  balances  had  fallen  in  three  months  from  thirteen 
crores  to  less  than  nine,  owing  to  'excessive  Military  drain.' 
....  On  the  following  day  (April  22)  a  despatch  was  sent 
out  to  the  Viceroy,  showing  that  there  appeared  a  deficiency  of 
not  less  than  5 1^4  crores.  This  vast  error  was  evidently  due  to 
underestimate  of  War  liabilities,  which  had  led  to  such  mis- 
information being  laid  before  Parliament,  and  to  the  sudden  dis- 
covery of  inability  to  "meet  the  usual  drawings." 

It  seemed  that  the  Government  knew  only  the  amount  audited, 
not  the  amount  spent.  Payments  were  entered  as  "advances," 
though  they  were  not  recoverable,  and  "the  great  negligence  was 
evidently  that  of  the  heads  of  departmental  accounts."  If  such 
a  mishap  should  occur  under  Home  Rule,  a  few  years  hence — • 
which  heaven  forbid — I  shudder  to  think  of  the  comments  of  the 
Englishman  and  the  Madras  Mail  on  the  shocking  inefficiency  of 
Indian  officials.  In  September  last,  our  present  Viceroy,  H.  E.  Lord 
Chelmsford,  defended  India  against  later  attacks  by  critics  who 
try  to  minimize  her  sacrifices  in  order  to  lessen  the  gratitude  felt 
by  Great  Britain  towards  her,  lest  that  gratitude  should  give 
birth  to  justice,  and  justice  should  award  freedom  to  India.  Lord 
Chelmsford  placed  before  his  Council  "in  studiously  considered 
outline,  a  summary  of  what  India  has  done  during  the  past  two 
years."  Omitting  his  references  to  what  was  done  under  Lord 
Hardinge,  as  stated  above,  I  may  quote  from  him: 

On  the  outbreak  of  War  of  the  4,598  British  officers  on  the  Indian  es- 
tablishment, 530  who  were  at  Home  on  leave  were  detained  by  the  War 
Office  for  service  in  Europe.  2,600  combatant  Officers  have  been  with- 
drawn from  India  since  the  beginning  of  the  War,  excluding  those  who 
proceeded  on  service  with  their  batteries  or  regiments.  In  order  to  make 
good  these  deficiencies  and  provide  for  War  wastage  the  Indian  Army  Re- 
serve of  Officers  was  expanded  from  a  total  of  40,  at  which  it  stood  on 
the  4th  August,  1914,  to  one  of  3,000. 

The  establishment  of  Indian  units  has  not  only  been  kept  up 
to  strength,  but  has  been  considerably  increased.  There  has 
been  an  augmentation  of  20  per  cent  in  the  cavalry  and  of  40 
per  cent  in  the  infantry,  while  the  number  of  recruits  enlisted 
since  the  beginning  of  the  War  is  greater  than  the  entire  strength 
of  the  Indian  Army  as  it  existed  on  the  4th  August,  1914.  Lord 
Chelmsford  rightly  pointed  out: 

The  Army  in  India  has  thus  proved  a  great  Imperial  asset,  and  in 
weighing  the  value  of  India's  contribution  to  the  War,  it  should  be  re- 
membered that  India's  forces  were  no  hasty  improvisation,  but  were  an 
army  in  being  fully  equipped  and  supplied,  which  had  previously  cost 
India  annually  a  large  sum  to  maintain. 

Lord  Chelmsford  has  established  what  he  calls  a  "Man-Power 
Board,"  the  duty  of  which  is  "to  collect  and  co-ordinate  all  the 
facts,  with  regard  to  the  supply  of  man-power  in  India."  It  has 
branches  in  all  the  Provinces.  A  steady  flow  of  reinforcements 
Bupplies  the  wastage  at  the  various  fronts,  and  the  labour  re- 
quired for  engineering,  transport,  etc.,  is  now  organised  in  20 

12 


corps  in  Mesopotamia  and  25  corps  in  Prance.  In  addi- 
tion, 60,000  artisans,  labourers  and  specialists  are  serving 
in  Mesopotamia  and  East  Africa,  and  some  20,000  menials 
and  followers  have  also  gone  overseas.  Indian  medical 
practitioners  have  accepted  temporary  commissions  in  the 
Indian  Medical  Service  to  the  number  of  500.  In 
view  of  this  fact,  due  to  Great  Britain's  bitter  need  of  help,  may 
we  not  hope  that  this  Service  will  welcome  Indians  in  time  of 
peace  as  well  as  in  time  of  War,  and  will  no  longer  bar  the  way 
by  demanding  the  taking  of  a  degree  in  the  United  Kingdom? 
It  is  also  worthy  of  notice  that  the  I.  M.  S.  Officers  in  charge  of 
district  duties  have  been  largely  replaced  by  Indian  medical 
men;  this,  again,  should  continue  after  the  War.  Another  fact, 
that  the  Army  Reserve  of  Officers  has  risen  from  40  to  3,000 
suggests  that  the  throwing  open  of  King's  Commission  to  quali- 
fied Indians  should  not  be  represented  by  a  meagre  nine.  If 
English  lads  of  19  and  20  are  worthy  of  King's  Commissions — 
and  the  long  roll  of  slain  Second  Lieutenants  proves  it — then 
certainly  Indian  lads,  since  Indians  have  fought  as  bravely  as 
Englishmen,  should  find  the  door  thrown  open  to  them  equally 
widely  in  their  own  country,  and  the  Indian  Army  should  be  led 
by  Indian  officers. 

With  such  a  record  of  deeds  as  the  one  I  have  baldly  sketched, 
it  is  not  necessary  to  say  much  in  words  as  to  India's  support  of 
Great  Britain  and  her  Allies.  She  has  proved  up  to  the  hilt  her 
desire  to  remain  within  the  Empire,  to  maintain  her  tie  with 
Great  Britain.  But  if  Great  Britain  is  to  call  successfully  on 
her  man-power,  as  Lord  Chelmsford  suggests  in  his  Man-Power 
Board,  then  must  the  man  who  fights  or  labours  have  a  man's 
Rights  in  his  own  land.  The  lesson  which  springs  out  of  this 
War  is  that  it  is  absolutely  necessary  for  the  future  safety  of 
the  Empire  that  India  shall  have  Home  Rule.  Had  her  Man- 
Power  been  utilised  earlier  there  would  have  been  no  War,  for 
none  would  have  dared  to  provoke  Great  Britain  and  India  to  a 
contest.  But  her  Man-Power  cannot  be  utilised  while  she  is  a 
subject  Nation.  She  cannot  afford  to  maintain  a  large  army,  if 
she  is  to  support  an  English  garrison,  to  pay  for  their  goings 
and  comings,  to  buy  stores  in  England  at  exorbitant  prices  and 
send  them  back  again  when  England  needs  them.  She  cannot 
afford  to  train  men  for  England,  and  only  have  their  services 
for  five  years.  She  cannot  afford  to  keep  huge  Gold  Reserves  in 
England,  and  be  straightened  for  cash,  while  she  lends  to 
England  out  of  her  Reserves,  taken  from  her  over-taxation, 
£27,000,000  for  War  expenses,  and  this,  be  it  remembered,  before 
the  great  War  Loan.  I  once  said  in  England:  "The  condition 
of  India's  loyalty  is  India's  freedom."  I  may  now  add:  "The 
condition  of  India's  usefulness  to  the  Empire  is  India's  free- 
dom." She  will  tax  herself  willingly  when  her  taxes  remain  in 
the  country  and  fertilise  it,  when  they  educate  her  people  and 

IS 


thus  increase  their  productive  power,  when  they  foster  her  trade 
and  create  for  her  new  industries. 

Great  Britain  needs  India  as  much  as  India  needs  England, 
for  prosperity  in  Peace  as  well  as  for  safety  in  War.  Mr. 
Montagu  has  wisely  said  that  "for  equipment  in  War  a  Nation 
needs  freedom  in  Peace."  Therefore  I  say  that,  for  both  coun- 
tries alike,  the  lesson  of  the  War  is  Home  Rule  for  India. 

Let  me  close  this  part  of  my  subject  by  laying  at  the  feet  of 
His  Imperial  Majesty  the  loving  homage  of  the  thousands  here 
assembled,  with  the  hope  and  belief  that,  ere  long,  we  shall  lay 
there  the  willing  and  grateful  homage  of  a  free  Nation. 

Causes  of  the  New  Spirit  in  India 
Apart  from  the  natural  exchange  of  thought  between  East  and 
West,  the  influence  of  English  education,  literature  and  ideals, 
the  effect  of  travel  in  Europe,  Japan  and  the  United  States  of 
America,  and  other  recognised  causes  for  the  changed  outlook 
in  India,  there  have  been  special  fopces  at  work  during  the  last 
few  years  to  arouse  a  New  Spirit  in  India,  and  to  alter  her  atti- 
tude of  mind.     These  may  be  summed  up  as: 

(a)  The  Awakening  of  Asia. 

(b)  Discussions  abroad  on  Alien  Rule  and  Imperial  Reconstruction. 

(c)  Loss  of  Belief  in  the  Superiority  of  the  White  Races, 
(a)  The  Awakening  of  the  Merchants. 

(e)  The  Awakening  of  the  Women  to  claim  their  Ancient  Position. 

(f)  The  Awakening  of  the  Masses. 

Each  of  these  causes  has  had  its  share  in  the  splendid  change 
of  attitude  in  the  Indian  Nation,  in  the  uprising  of  a  spirit  of 
pride  of  country,  of  independence,  of  self-reliance,  of  dignity,  of 
self-respect.  The  War  has  quickened  the  rate  of  evolution  of 
the  world,  and  no  country  has  experienced  the  quickening  more 
than  our  Motherland. 

(a)  The  Awakening  of  Asia 

In  a  conversation  I  had  with  Lord  Minto,  soon  after  his  ar- 
rival as  Viceroy,  he  discussed  the  so-called  "unrest  in  India," 
and  recognised  it  as  the  inevitable  result  of  English  Education, 
of  English  Ideals  of  Democracy,  of  the  Japanese  victory  over 
Russia,  and  of  the  changing  conditions  in  the  outer  world.  I 
was,  therefore,  not  surprised  to  read  his  remark  that  he  recog- 
nised, "frankly  and  publicly,  that  new  aspirations  were  stirring 
in  the  hearts  of  the  people,  that  they  were  part  of  a  larger  move- 
meht  common  to  the  whole  East,  and  that  it  was  necessary  to 
satisfy  them  to  a  reasonable  extent  by  giving  them  a  larger 
share  in  the  administration." 

But  the  present  movement  in  India  will  be  very  poorly  under- 
stood, if  it  be  regarded  only  in  connection  with  the  movement 
in  the  East.  The  awakening  of  Asia  is  part  of  a  world-move- 
ment, which  has  been  uqickened  into  marvelous  rapidity  by  the 
world-War.     The   world-movement  is   towards    Democracy,    and 

14 


for  the  West  dates  from  the  breaking  away  of  the  American 
Colonies  from  Great  Britain,  ^consummated  in  1776,  and  its  sequel 
in  the  French  Revolution  of  1789.  Needless  to  say  that  its  root 
was  in  the  growth  of  modern  science,  undermining  the  fabric  of 
intellectual  servitude,  in  the  work  of  the  Encyclopaedists,  and 
in  that  of  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau  and  of  Thomas  Paine.  In  the 
East,  the  swift  changes  in  Japan,  the  success  of  the  Japanese 
Empire  against  Russia,  the  downfall  of  the  Manchu  dynasty  in 
China  and  the  establishment  of  a  Chinese  Republic,  the  efforts 
at  improvement  in  Persia,  hindered  by  the  interference  of 
Russia  and  Great  Britain  with  her  growing  ambition,  and  the 
creation  of  British  and  Russian  "spheres  of  influence,"  depriving 
her  of  her  just  liberty,  and  now  the  Russian  Revolution  and  the 
probable  rise  of  a  Russian  Republic  in  Europe  and  Asia,  have 
all  entirely  changed  the  conditions  before  existing  in  India. 
Across  Asia,  beyond  the  Himalayas,  stretch  free  and  self-ruling 
Nations.  India  no  longer  sees  as  her  Asian  neighbours  the  huge 
domains  of  a  Tsar  and  a  Chinese  despot,  and  compares  her  con- 
dition under  British  rule  with  those  of  their  subject  populations. 
British  rule  profited  by  the  comparison,  at  least  until  1905,  when 
the  great  period  of  repression  set  in.  But  in  future,  unless  India 
wins  Self-Government,  she  will  look  enviously  at  her  Self- 
Governing  neighbours,  and  the  contrast  will  intensify  her  unrest. 

But  even  if  she  gains  Home  Rule,  as  I  believe  she  will,  her 
position  in  the  Empire  will  imperatively  demand  that  she  shall 
be  strong  as  well  as  free.  She  becomes  not  only  a  vulnerable 
point  in  the  Empire,  as  the  Asian  Nations  evolve  their  own  am- 
bitions and  rivalries,  but  also  a  possession  to  be  battled  for. 
Mr.  Laing  once  said:  "India  is  the  milch  cow  of  England,"  a 
Kamadhenu,  in  fact,  a  cow  of  plenty;  and  if  that  view  should 
arise  in  Asia,  the  ownership  of  the  milch  cow  would  become  a 
matter  of  dispute,  as  of  old  between  Vashishta  and  Vishvamitra. 
Hence  India  must  be  capable  of  self-defence  both  by  land  and 
sea.  There  may  be  a  struggle  for  the  primary  of  Asia,  for 
supremacy  in  the  Pacific,  for  the  mastery  of  Australasia,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  inevitable  trade-struggles,  in  which  Japan  is  al- 
ready endangering  Indian  industry  and  Indian  trade,  while  India 
is  unable  to  protect  herself. 

In  order  to  face  these  larger  issues  with  equanimity,  the  Em- 
pire requires  a  contented,  strong,  self-dependent  and  armed  India, 
able  to  hold  her  own  and  to  aid  the  Dominions,  especially  Aus- 
tralia, with  her  small  population  and  immense  unoccupied  and 
undefended  area.  India  alone  has  the  man-power  which  can 
effectively  maintain  the  Empire  in  Asia,  and  it  is  a  short- 
sighted, a  criminally  short-sighted,  policy  not  to  build  up  her 
strength  as  a  Self-Governing  State  within  the  Commonwealth  of 
Free  Nations  under  the  British  Crown.  The  Englishmen  in  India 
talk  loudly  of  their  interests;  what  can  this  mere  handful  do 
to  protect  their  interests  against  attack  in  the  coming  years? 

16 


Only,  in  a  free  and  powerful  India  will  they  be  safe.  Those  who 
read  Japanese  papers  know  how  strongly,  even  during  the  War, 
they  parade  unchecked  their  pro-German  sympathies  and  now 
likely  after  the  War  is  an  alliance  between  these  two  ambitious 
and  warlike  Nations.  Japan  will  come  out  of  the  War  with  her 
army  and  navy  unweakened,  and  her  trade  immensely  strength- 
ened. Every  consideration  of  sane  statesmanship  should  lead 
Great  Britain  to  trust  India  more  than  Japan,  so  that  the  British 
Empire  in  Asia  may  rest  on  the  sure  foundation  of  Indian 
loyalty,  the  loyalty  of  a  free  and  contended  people,  rather  than 
be  dependent  on  the  continued  friendship  of  a  possible  future 
rival.  For  international  friendships  are  governed  by  National 
interests,  and  are  built  on  quicksands,  not  on  rock. 

Englishmen  in  India  must  give  up  the  idea  that  English 
dominance  is  necessary  for  the  protection  of  their  interests, 
amounting,  in  1915,  to  £365,399,000  sterling.  They  do  not 
claim  to  dominate  the  UnifSn  States  of  America,  because  they 
have  invested  there  £688,078,000.  They  do  not  claim  to  dominate 
the  Argentine  Republic,  because  they  have  invested  there 
£269,808,000.  Why  then  should  they  claim  to  dominate  India  on 
the  ground  of  their  investment?  Britons  must  give  up  the  idea 
that  India  is  a  possession  to  be  exploited  for  their  own  benefit, 
and  must  see  her  as  a  friend,  an  equal,  a  Self-Governing  Dom- 
inion within  the  Empire,  a  Nation  like  themse'lves,  a  willing 
partner  in  the  Empire,  and  not  a  dependent.  The  democratic 
movement  in  Japan,  China  and  Russia  in  Asia  has  sympathet- 
ically affected  India,  and  it  is  idle  to  pretend  that  it  will  cease 
to  affect  her. 

(d)  Discussions  Abroad  on  Alien  Rule  and  Reconstruction 

But  there  are  other  causes  which  have  been  working  in  India, 
consequent  on  the  British  attitude  against  autocracy  and  in  de- 
fence of  freedom  in  Europe,  while  her  attitude  to  India  has, 
until  lately,  been  left  in  doubt.  Therefore  I  spoke  of  a  splendid 
opportunity  lost.  India  at  first  believed  whole-heartedly  that 
Great  Britain  was  fighting  for  the  freedom  of  all  Nationalities. 
Even  now,  Mr.  Asquith  declared — in  his  speech  in  the  House  of 
Commons  reported  here  last  October,  on  the  peace  resolution  of 
Mr.  Ramsay  Macdonald — that  "the  Allies  are  fighting  for  nothing 
but  freedom,  and,  an  important  addition — for  nothing  short  of 
freedom."  In  his  speech  declaring  that  Britain  would  stand  by 
France  in  her  claim  for  the  restoration  of  Alsace  Lorraine,  he 
spoke  of  "the  intolerable  degradation  of  a  foreign  yoke."  Is 
such  a  yoke  less  intolerable,  less  wounding  to  self  respect,  here 
than  in  Alsace  Lorraine,  where  the  rulers  and  the  ruled  are 
both  of  European  blood,  similar  in  religion  and  habits?  As  the 
War  went  on  India  slowly  and  unwillingly  came  to  realise  that 
the  hatred  of  autocracy  was  confined  to  autocracy  in  the  West, 

1« 


and  that  the  degradation  was  only  regarded  as  intolerable  for 
men  of  white  races;  that  freedom  was  lavishly  promised  to  all 
except  to  India;  that  new  powers  were  to  be  given  to  the  Dom- 
inions, but  not  to  India.  India  was  markedly  left  out  of  the 
speeches  of  statesmen  dealing  with  the  future  of  the  Empire, 
and  at  last  there  was  plain  talk  of  the  White  Empire,  the  Em- 
pire of  the  Five  Nations,  and  the  "coloured  races"  were  lumped 
together  as  the  wards  of  the  White  Empire,  doomed  to  an  in- 
definite minority. 

The  peril  was  pressing;  the  menace  unmistakable.  The  recon- 
struction of  the  Empire  was  on  the  anvil;  what  was  to  be  India's 
place  therein?  The  Dominions  were  proclaimed  as  partners; 
was  India  to  remain  a  Dependency?  Mr.  Bonar  Law  bade  the 
Dominions  strike  while  the  iron  was  hot;  was  India  to  wait  till 
it  was  cold?  India  saw  her  soldiers  fighting  for  freedom  in 
Flanders,  in  France,  in  Gallipoli,  in  Asia  Minor,  in  China,  in 
Africa;  was  she  to  have  no  share  of  the  freedom  for  which  she 
fought?  At  last  she  sprang  to  her  feet  and  cried,  in  the  words 
of  one  of  her  noblest  sons:  "Freedom  is  my  birthright;  and  I 
want  it."  The  words  "Home  Rule"  became  her  Mantram.  She 
claimed  her  place  in  the  Empire. 

Thus,  while  she  continued  to  support  and  even  to  increase, 
her  army  abroad,  fighting  for  the  Empire,  and  poured  out  her 
treasures  as  water  for  Hospital  Ships,  War  Funds,  Red  Cross 
Organisations,  and  the  gigantic  War  Loan,  a  dawning  fear  op- 
pressed her,  lest,  if  she  did  not  take  order  with  her  own  house- 
hold, success  in  the  War  for  the  Empire  might  mean  decreased 
liberty  for  herself. 

The  recognition  of  the  right  of  the  Indian  Government  to 
make  its  voice  heard  in  Imperial  matters,  when  they  were  under 
discussion  in  an  Imperial  Conference,  was  a  step  in  the  right 
direction.  But  disappointment  was  felt  that,  while  other  coun- 
tries were  represented  by  responsible  Ministers,  the  representa- 
tion in  India's  case  was  of  the  Government,  of  a  Government 
irresponsible  to  her,  and  not  the  representative  of  herself.  No 
fault  was  found  with  the  choice  itself,  but  only  with  the  non- 
representative  character  of  the  chosen,  for  they  were  selected  by 
the  Government,  and  not  by  the  elected  members  of  the  Supreme 
Council.  This  defect  in  the  resolution  moved  by  the  Hon.  Khan 
Bahadur  M.  M.  Shafi  on  October  2,  1915,  was  pointed  out  by  the 
Hon,  Mr,  Surendranath  Bannerji,     He  said: 

My  Lord,  in  view  of  a  situation  so  full  of  hope  and  promise,  it  seems 
to  me  that  my  friend's  Resolution  does  not  go  far  enough.  He  pleads  for 
official  representation  at  the  Imperial  Conference  ;  he  does  not  plead  for 
popular  representation.  He  urges  that  an  address  be  presented  to  His 
Majesty's  Government,  through  the  Secretary  of  State  for  India,  for 
official  representation  at  the  Imperial  Council.  My  Lord,  official  repre- 
sentation may  mean  little  or  nothing.  It  may  indeed  be  attended  with 
some  risk  ;  for  I  am  sorry  to  have  to  say — but  say  it  I  must — that  our 
officials  do  not  always  see  eye  to  eye  with  us  as  regards  many  great  public 

17 


questions  which  aflfect  this  country  ;  and  indeed  their  views,  judged  from 
our  standpoint,  may  sometimes  seem  adverse  to  our  interests.  At  the 
same  time,  my  Lord,  I  recognise  the  fact  that  the  Imperial  Conference  is 
an  assemblage  of  officials  pure  and  simple,  consisting  of  Ministers  of  the 
United  Kingdom  and  of  the  Self-Governing  Colonies.  But,  my  Lord,  there 
is  an  essential  difference  between  them  and  ourselves.  In  their  case,  the 
Ministers  are  the  elect  of  the  people,  their  organ  and  their  voice,  answer- 
able to  them  for  their  conduct  and  their  proceedings.  In  our  case,  our 
officials  are  public  servants  in  name,  but  in  reality  they  are  the  masters 
of  the  public.  The  situation  may  improve,  and  I  trust  it  will,  under  the 
liberalising  influence  of  your  Excellency's  beneficent  administration  ;  but 
we  must  take  things  as  they  are,  and  not  indulge  in  building  castles  in 
the  air  which  may  vanish  "like  the  baseless  fabric  of  a  vision." 

It  was  said  to  be  an  epoch  making  event  that  "Indian  Repre- 
sentatives" took  part  in  the  Conference.  Representatives  they 
were,  but,  as  said,  of  the  British  Government  in  India,  not  of 
India,  whereas  their  colleagues  represented  their  Nations.  They 
did  good  work,  none  the  less,  for  they  were  able  and  experienced 
men,  though  they  failed  us  in  the  Imperial  Preference  Confer- 
ence, and,  partially,  on  the  Indentured  Labour  question.  Yet  we 
hope  that  the  presence  in  the  Conference  of  men  of  Indian  birth 
may  prove  to  be  the  proverbial  "thin  end  of  the  wedge,"  and 
may  have  convinced  their  colleagues  that,  while  India  was  still 
a  Dependency,   India's  sons  were   fully  their  equals. 

The  Report  of  the  Public  Services  Commission,  though  now 
too  obviously  obsolete  to  be  discussed,  caused  both  disappoint- 
ment and  resentment;  for  it  showed  that,  in  the  eyes  of  the 
majority  of  the  Commissioners,  English  domination  in  Indian 
administration  was  to  be  perpetual,  and  that  30  years  hence  she 
would  only  hold  a  pitiful  25  per  cent  of  the  higher  appointments 
in  the  I.  C,  S.  and  the  Police.  I  cannot,  however,  mention  that 
Commission,  even  in  passing,  without  voicing  India's  thanks  to 
the  Hon.  Mr.  Justice  Rahim,  for  his  rare  courage  in  writing  a 
solitary  Minute  of  Dissent,  in  which  he  totally  rejected  the  Re- 
port, and  laid  down  the  right  principles  which  should  govern 
recruitment  for   the   Indian   Civil   Services. 

India  had  but  three  representatives  on  the  Commission;  G.  K. 
Gokhale  died  ere  it  made  its  Report,  his  end  quickened  by  his 
sufferings  during  its  work,  by  the  humiliation  of  the  way  in 
which  his  countrymen  were  treated.  Of  Mr.  Abdur  Rahim  I 
have  already  spoken.  The  Hon.  Mr.  M.  B.  Chaubal  signed  the 
Report,  but  dissented  from  some  of  its  most  important  recom- 
mendations. The  whole  Report  was  written  "before  the  flood," 
and  it  is  now  merely  an  antiquarian  curiosity. 

India,  for  all  these  reasons,  was  forced  to  see  before  her  a 
future  of  perpetual  subordination:  the  Briton  rules  in  Great 
Briton,  the  Frenchman  in  Prance,  the  American  in  America,  each 
Dominion  in  its  own  area,  but  the  Indian  was  to  rule  nowhere; 
alone  among  the  peoples  of  the  world,  he  was  not  to  feel  his 
own  country  as  his  own.  "Britain  for  the  British"  was  right 
and  natural;  "India  for  the  Indians"  was  wrong,  even  seditious. 

18 


It  must  be  "India  for  the  Empire,"  or  not  even  for  the  Empire, 
but  "for  the  rest  of  the  Empire,"  careless  of  herself.  "British 
support  for  British  Trade"  was  patriotic  and  proper  in  Britain. 
"Swadeshi  goods  for  Indians"  showed  a  petty  and  anti-Imperial 
spirit  in  India.  The  Indian  was  to  continue  to  live  perpetually, 
and  even  thankfully,  as  Gopal  Krishna  Gokhale  said  he  lived 
now,  in  "an  atmosphere  of  inferiority,"  and  to  be  proud  to  be  a 
citizen  (without  rights)  of  the  Empire,  while  its  other  com- 
ponent Nations  were  to  be  citizens  (with  rights)  in  their  own 
countries  first,  and  citizens  of  the  Empire  secondarily.  Just  as 
his  trust  in  Great  Britain  was  strained  nearly  to  breaking  point 
came  the  glad  news  of  Mr.  Montagu's  appointment  as  Secretary 
of  State  for  India,  of  the  Viceroy's  invitation  to  him,  and  of  his 
coming  to  hear  for  himself  what  India  wanted.  It  was  a  ray  of 
sunshine  breaking  through  the  gloom,  confidence  in  Great 
Britain  revived,  and  glad  preparation  was  made  to  welcome  the 
coming  of  a  friend. 

The  attitude  of  India  has  changed  to  meet  the  changed  atti- 
tude of  the  Governments  of  India  and  Great  Britain.  But  let 
none  imagine  that  the  consequential  change  of  attitude  connotes 
any  change  in  her  determination  to  win  Home  Rule.  She  is 
ready  to  consider  terms  of  peace,  but  it  must  be  "peace  with 
honour,"  and  honour  in  this  connexion  means  Freedom.  If  this 
be  not  granted,  an  even  more  vigorous  agitation  will  begin. 
(c)  Loss  of  Belief  in  the  Superiority  of  the  White  Races 

The  undermining  of  this  belief  dates  from  the  spreading  of 
the  Arya  Samaj  and  the  Theosophical  Society.  Both  bodies 
sought  to  lead  the  Indian  people  to  a  sense  of  the  value  of  their 
own  civilisation,  to  pride  in  their  past,  creating  self  respect  in 
the  present,  and  self  confidence  in  the  future.  They  destroyed 
the  unhealthy  inclination  to  imitate  the  West  in  all  things,  and 
taught  discrimination,  the  using  only  of  what  was  valuable  in 
western  thought  and  culture,  instead  of  a  mere  slavish  copying 
of  everything.  Another  great  force  was  that  of  Swami  Vive- 
kananda,  alike  in  his  passionate  love  and  admiration  for  India, 
and  his  exposure  of  the  evils  resulting  from  Materialism  in  the 
West.     Take  the  following: 

Children  of  India,  I  am  here  to  speak  to  you  today  about  some  practical 
things,  and  my  object  in  reminding  you  about  the  glories  of  the  past  is 
simply  this.  Many  times  have  I  been  told  that  looking  into  the  past  only 
degenerates  and  lands  to  nothing,  and  that  we  should  look  to  the  future. 
That  is  true.  But  out  of  the  past  is  built  the  future.  Look  back,  there- 
fore, as  far  as  you  can,  drink  deep  of  the  eternal  fountains  that  are  behind, 
and  after  that,  look  forward,  march  forward,  and  make  India  brighter, 
greater,  much  higher  than  she  ever  was.  Our  ancestors  were  great.  We 
must  recall  that.  We  must  learn  the  elements  of  our  being,  the  blood 
that  courses  in  our  veins  ;  we  must  have  faith  in  that  blood,  and  what  it 
did  in  the  past ;  and  out  of  that  faith,  and  consciousness  of  past  great- 
ness, we  must  build  an  India  yet  greater  than  what  she  has  been. 

And  again: 

I  know  for  certain  that  millions,  I  say  deliberately,  millions,  in  every 
civilised  land  are  waiting  for  the  message  that  will  save  them  from  the 

19 


hideous  abyss  of  materialism,  into  which  modern  money-worsliip  Is  driving 
them  headlong,  and  many  of  the  leaders  of  the  new  Social  Movements 
have  already  discovered  that  Vedanta  in  its  highest  form  can  alone  spir- 
itualise their  social  aspirations. 

The  process  was  continued  by  the  admiration  of  Sanskrit 
literature  expressed  by  European  scholars  and  philosophers. 
But  the  effect  of  these  was  confined  to  the  few  and  did  not  reach 
the  many.  The  first  great  shock  to  their  belief  in  white  su- 
periority came  from  the  triumph  of  Japan  over  Russia,  the 
facing  of  a  huge  European  Power  by  a  comparatively  small 
eastern  Nation,  the  exposure  of  the  weakness  and  rottenness  of 
the  Russian  leaders,  and  the  contrast  with  their  hardy  virile 
opponents,  ready  to  sacrifice  everything  for  their  country. 

The  "second  great  shock  has  come  from  the  frank  brutality  of 
German  theories  of  the  State,  and  their  practical  carrying  out 
in  the  treatment  of  conquered  districts  and  the  laying  waste  of 
evacuated  areas  in  retreat.  The  teachings  of  Bismarck  and  their 
practical  application  in  France,  Flanders,  Belgium,  Poland  and 
Serbia  have  destroyed  all  the  glamour  of  the  superiority  of 
Christendom  over  Asia.  Its  vaunted  civilisation  is  seen  to  be 
but  a  thin  veneer,  and  its  religion  a  matter  of  form  rather  than 
of  life.  Gazing  from  afar  at  the  ghastly  heaps  of  dead  and  the 
hosts  of  the  mutilated,  at  science  turned  into  deviltry  and  ever 
inventing  new  tortures  for  rending  and  slaying,  Asia  may  be 
forgiven  for  thinking  that,  on  the  whole,  she  prefers  her  own 
religions  and  her  own  civilisations. 

But  even  deeper  than  the  outer  tumult  of  War  has  pierced  the 
doubt  as  to  the  reality  of  the  Ideals  of  Liberty  and  Nationality 
so  loudly  proclaimed  by  the  foremost  western  Nations,  the  doubt 
of  the  honesty  of  their  champions.  Sir  James  Meston  said  truly, 
a  short  time  ago,  that  he  had  never,  in  his  long  experience, 
known  Indians  in  so  distrustful  and  suspicious  a  mood  as  that 
which  he  met  in  them  today.  And  that  is  so.  For  long  years 
Indians  have  been  chafing  over  the  many  breaches  of  promises 
and  pledges  to  them  that  remain  unredeemed.  The  maintenance 
here  of  a  system  of  political  repression,  of  coercive  measures  in- 
creased in  number  and  more  harshly  applied  since  1905,  the 
carrying  of  the  system  to  a  wider  extent  since  the  War  for  the 
sanctity  of  treaties  and  for  the  protection  of  Nationalities  has 
been  going  on,  have  deepened  the  mistrust,  A  frank  and  cour- 
ageous statesmanship  applied  to  the  honest  carrying  out  of  large 
reforms  too  long  delayed,  can  alone  remove  it.  The  time  for 
political  tinkering  is  past;  the  time  for  wise  and  definite  changes 
is  here. 

To  these  deep  causes  must  be  added  the  comparison  between 
the  progressive  policy  of  some  of  the  Indian  States  in  matters 
which  most  affect  the  happiness  of  the  people,  and  the  slow  ad- 
vance made  under  British  administration.  The  Indian  notes 
that  this  advance  is  made  under  the  guidance  of  rulers  and  min- 

20 


isters  of  his  own  race.  When  he  sees  that  the  suggestions  made 
in  the  People's  Assembly  in  Mysore  are  fully  considered  and, 
when  possible,  given  effect  to,  he  realises  that  without  the  forms 
of  power,  the  members  exercise  more  real  power  than  those  in 
our  Legislative  Councils.  He  sees  education  spreading,  new 
industries  fostered,  villagers  encouraged  to  manage  their  own 
affairs  and  take  the  burden  of  their  own  responsibility,  and  he 
wonders  why  Indian  incapacity  is  so  much  more  efficient  than 
British  capacity. 

Perhaps,  after  all,  for  Indians,  Indian  rule  may  be  the  best. 

(d)   The  Awakening  of  the  Merchants 

Of  the  many  forces  that  have  created  New  India,  the  awaken^ 
ing  of  the  Merchants  into  political  life  is  perhaps  the  most 
potent,  and  the  most  pregnant  with  happy  possibilities.  Sir  Dorab 
Tata,  in  the  Industrial  Conference  in  Bombay,  1915,  advocated 
the  yoking  together  of  Politics  and  Industry.  It  is  now  coming 
about.  Hitherto  the  merchants  had  remained  immersed  in  their 
own  occupations,  but  they  were  awakened  by  the  War  to  the 
necessity  of  taking  part  in  politics  by  finding  that  those  very 
occupations  were  threatened  with  disaster  by  the  attitude  of 
the  Government;  as  for  instance,  the  refusal  to  lend  a  helping 
hand  to  industries  which  had  been  connected  closely  with  Ger- 
'man  trade  and  were  menaced  with  ruin  by  the  War;  by  the 
refusal  to  aid  the  efforts  made  to  replace  necessaries,  hitherto 
supplied  by  Germany,  by  the  founding  or  financing  of  factories 
for  their  production  at  home;  by  the  restrictions  put  on  trade 
under  pretext  of  the  War,  that  prevented  the  legitimate  expan- 
sion of  promising  branches  of  industry;  by  the  absence  of 
effort  to  relieve  the  stringency  of  the  money  market, 
wealthy  merchants  being  unable  to  obtain  cash  to  meet 
their  liabilities  here,  because  their  English  debtors  could  not 
transmit  the  money  they  owed;  some  were  even  obliged  to  sell 
the  depreciated  Government  paper  at  heavy  loss  in  order  to 
maintain  their  credit;  in  other  cases  War  Bonds  were  offered  to 
them  in  lieu  of  cash  for  goods  supplied.  The  details  have  varied 
in  different  centres,  and  the  wealthy  and  independent  merchants 
of  Bombay  have  suffered  less  than  the  merchants  of  Madras,  with 
whose  difficulties  I  am  naturally  more  familiar. 

There,  added  difficulties  constantly  arise  from  the  favouritism 
shown  by  the  Presidency  Bank  to  English,  as  compared  with 
Indian,  clients,  and  the  absence  of  Indians  from  its  Directorate, 
complained  of  for  years.  The  anxiety  felt  by  the  merchants  was 
largely  increased  by  the  depreciation  of  Government  paper,  and 
apart  from  the  heavy  losses  of  capital  incurred  when  necessity 
forced  holders  to  sell  for  cash,  an  uneasy  feeling  arose  as  to  the 
stability  of  the  Government,  when  its  securities  fell  so  low. 

Another  disturbing  cause  was  the  alienation  during  many  years 

21 


of  lands  and  minerals  to  foreigners,  the  Government  looking  on 
with  indifference. 

The  copra  and  coir  industry  of  the  West  Coast  had  passed  into 
German  hands;  struck  away  from  them  by  the  War,  there  was 
danger  of  its  being  absorbed  by  the  English;  happily  the  firm  of 
Tata  and  Sons  stepped  in  and  rescued  it,  and  it  remains  an 
Indian  industry.  Ten  years  ago,  the  working  of  the  blend  known 
as  monizite,  an  ingredient  in  munitions,  was  absorbed  by  Ger- 
many. Indian  mica  mines  became  German  property.  Undressed 
hides  were  exported  wholesale  to  Germany,  although  Mysore  had 
shown  that  they  could  be  dressed  and  tanned  better  in  Indian 
than  in  European  factories,  and  only  a  little  encouragement  and 
help  were  needed  to  ensure  their  dressing  and  tanning,  if  not 
also  their  working,  here.  Instead  of  that,  the  undressed  hides 
were  bought  up  by  Government  at  a  price  fixed  by  themselves, 
and  were  largely  exported  to  be  dressed,  tanned  and  worked 
abroad.  The  Viceroy,  speaking  in  the  Supreme  Council  on  Sep- 
tember 5th  last,  stated  that  large  orders  had  been  given  to 
"tanners  in  India,"  and  that  experimental  work  in  tanning  had 
yielded  results  which  promised  success  on  a  commercial  scale;  he 
expressed  the  hope  that,  after  the  War,  the  tanning  industry 
would  undergo  a  great  expansion  for  general  purposes.  But 
hide  merchants  are  distressed  by  an  order  that  hides  are  to  be 
purchased  at  War  prices,  the  British  War  Office  buying  them  to. 
provide  with  leather  goods  the  civilian  population  in  Britain.  But 
what  has  the  War  Office  to  do  with  providing  boots  for  civilians, 
and  why  should  India  be  drained  for  civil  as  well  as  for  military 
purposes?  If  the  tanning  experiments  are  being  carried  on  with 
India's  money  by  experts  paid  by  India,  and  not  by  British  capi- 
talists, then  the  outcome  should  be  the  property  of  India  and 
enrich  the  people  of  the  country,  not  British  merchants  and 
manufacturers  settled  here. 

The  war  has  turned  the  attention  of  Government  to  the  wis- 
dom of  utilizing  India's  immense  natural  resources,  and  the 
Viceroy  speaks  of  organizing  these  resources  with  "a  view  to 
making  India  more  self-contained,  and  less  dependent  on  the 
outer  world  for  the  supplies  of  manufactured  goods,"  We  heartily 
endorse  this  view.  This  has  long  been  the  cry  from  Indians, 
for  India  with  her  varieties  of  soil  and  climate,  can  produce 
all  the  materials  she  needs,  and  with  her  surplus  goods  she  can, 
as  Phillimore  said  of  her  in  the  seventeenth  century,  "with  the 
droppings  of  her  soil  feed  distant  nations."  But  the  East  India 
Company  first,  the  British  Government  next,  and  lately  exploit- 
ing bodies  of  imperialist  traders,  have  vehemently  insisted  that 
India  should  supply  raw  materials,  export  them  for  manufacture 
abroad,  and  purchase,  preferably  within  the  Empire,  the  goods 
manufactured  out  of  them.  As  Macaulay  pointed  out,  the  mar- 
velous expansion  of  English  industry  was  contemporaneous  with 
the  impoverishment  of  India.    The  reversal  of  this  policy  by  the 

22 


present  Viceroy  will  earn  India's  undying  gratitude,  if  he  fosters 
Indian  industries  and  not  English  industries  in  India.  A  wit- 
ness before  the  Industries  Commission  stated  that  India  should 
raise  products  for  use  outside,  that  is,  as  the  East  India  Com- 
pany put  it,  become  a  plantation  for  the  supply  of  raw  materials. 
The  Viceroy  must  pardon  us,  if  previous  exeprience  has  made 
us  anxious  on  this  point.  We  cannot  forget  that  a  century  ago 
the  traces  of  iron  were  found  in  the  Central  Provinces,  and 
that  nothing  was  done  to  extract  the  metal — England  then  being 
the  world's  shop  for  iron  to  her  own  huge  profit  and  not  desiring 
a  rival.  It  was  left  for  Tata  to  seize  the  opportunity,  and  his 
shares  of  Rs.  30  are  now  sold  at  Rs.  1180.  He  started  a  great 
industry,  and  Tata's  steel  is  sought  so  largely  that  he  cannot 
meet  the  demand.  Had  the  iron  been  raised  and  worked  here 
during  these  long  years,  we  should  not  now  be  dependent  on 
Britain  for  our  machinery,  the  want  of  which  cripples  the  efforts 
to  found  new  industries  and  to  expand  old  ones,  in  order  to 
supply  the  demand  caused  by  the  necessary  absorption  of  fac- 
tories in  Great  Britain  for  war  work. 

The  Viceroy  remarks  truly  that  previous  "efforts  were  more 
sporadic  than  systematic,"  but  proceeds: 

The  marked  success  which  has  followed  the  organization  of  research 
and  demonstration  work  in  scientific  agriculture,  and  the  assistance 
which  has  been  given  to  the  mineral  industries  by  the  Geological  Survey 
are  striking  examples  that  encourage  a  bolder  policy  on  similar  lines  for 
the  benefit  of  other  and   especially   the   manufacturing  industries. 

Here  again,  we  must  pause  to  remark  that  some  of  these  ex- 
periments in  scientific  agriculture  result  in  efforts  to  meet  the 
demands  of  England,  rather  than  those  of  India.  India  works 
up  short-stapled  cotton.  Especially  in  her  hand  loom  industry, 
short  stapled  cotton  suits  her.  Lancashire  wants  long  stapled, 
and  cannot  get  enough  from  the  United  States  and  Egypt.  There- 
fore, India  should  substitute  long  for  short  stapled  cotton.  We 
confess  we  do  not  see  the  sequitur.  Nor  do  we  find,  in  our  study 
of  English  trade,  that  England,  which  is  set  up  as  an  example 
to  be  copied,  has  followed  self-denying  ordinances,  and  has  reg- 
ulated her  production  so  as  to  help  foreign  countries  to  her 
own  detriment. 

However,  the  war  has  done  for  India,  in  awakening  the  in- 
terest of  the  Government  in  her  industries,  that  which  the  at- 
tempts of  Indian  patriots  have  failed  to  do.  The  war  brought 
about  the  Industries  Commission,  and  the  need  for  munitions 
has  forced  industrial  organization  for  their  production.  It  is 
for  Indian  merchants  to  see,  by  seizing  and  utilizing  the  po- 
litical weapon,  that  the  organization  and  encouragement  of  in- 
dustries by  Government — unless  it  be  a  Home  Government,  under 
their  own  control — does  not  reduce  Indians  to  a  more  subor- 
dinate position  than  they  now  hold,  it  is  this  danger  which 
is  playing  a  great  part  in  the  fear  which  has  caused  the  Awak- 

23 


ening  of  the  Merchants.  The  tea  industry,  for  instance,  is  in 
the  hands  of  English  planters,  and  while  incomes  drawn  from 
other  agricultural  profits  have  been  taxed,  incomes  derived  form 
tea — which  is  certainly  an  agricultural  profit — have  wholly  es- 
caped till  lately.  If  this  policy  be  pursued,  and  the  fostering  of 
industries  with  Indian  money  places  the  industries  in  foreign 
hands,  Indians  will  even  more  than  now,  be  dubashes  and  clerks 
and  other  employees  of  English  captained  firms,  and  will  depend 
ever  more  and  more  on  wages,  driven  lower  and  lower  by  in- 
creasing competition. 

The  industrial  prospects  in  India  are  by  no  means  discour- 
aging, if  Indians  exert  themselves  to  hold  their  own.  Mr.  Tozer, 
in  his  British  India  and  Its  Trade,  says: 

The  cotton  and  jute  manufacturers  already  conducted  on  a  large 
scale,  offer  scope  for  still  further  development.  Sugar  and  tobacco  are 
produced  In  large  quantities,  but  both  require  the  application  of  the 
latest  scientific  processes  of  cultivation  and  manufacture.  Oil  seeds 
might  be  crushed  in  India  instead  of  being  exported  ;  while  cotton  seeds, 
as  yet  imperfectly  utilized,  can  be  turned  to  good  account.  Hides  and 
skins,  now  largely  exported  raw,  might  be  more  largely  tanned  and  dressed 
in  India.  Again,  the  woollen  and  silken  fabrics  manufactured  in  India 
are  mostly  coarse  fabrics  and  there  is  scope  for  the  production  of  finer 
goods.  Although  railways  make  their  own  rolling  stock,  they  have  to 
import  wheels  and  axles,  tyres  and  other  iron  work.  At  present  steel 
is  manufactured  on  a  very  small  scale,  and  the  number  of  ii-on  foun- 
dries and  machine  shops,  although  increasing,  is  capable  of  greater  ex- 
pansion. Machinery  and  machine  tools  have  for  the  most  part  to  be 
imported.  Millions  of  agriculturists  and  artisans  use  rude  tools  which 
might  be  replaced  by  similar  articles  that  are  more  durable  and  of  better 
make.  Improved  oil  presses  and  hand-looms  should  find  a  profitable 
market.  Paper  mills  and  flour  mills  might  be  established  in  greater 
numbers.  Tliere  are  openings  also  for  the  manufacture  of  sewing  ma- 
chines, fire-works,  rope,  boots  and  shoes,  saddlery,  harness,  clocks, 
watches,  aniline  and  alazarine  dyes,  electrical  appliances,  glass  and 
glassware,  tea  chests,  gloves,  rice,  starch,  matches,  lamps,  candles,  soap, 
linen,   hardware  and  cutlery. 

Obviously,  India  might  be  largely  self-sufficing,  and,  as  of 
old,  export  her  surplus.  Bnt  now  her  imports  are  rising,  and 
under  the  present  system  her  exports  do  not  enrich  her  as  they 
should. 

Imports  were  steadily  rising  before  the  war,  but  dropped  with 
it   (amounts  given  in  pounds  sterling)  :* 

1911-12— £  92,383,200  Piece  Goods 28,592,000 

1912-13—  107,332,490  Piece  Goods 35,536,000 

1913-14—  122,165,203  Piece  Goods 38,758,000 

1914-15—     91,955,600  Piece  Goods 28,643,000 

1915-16—     87,560,169  Piece  Goods 25,175,000 

24 


The  pervious  five  years  also  show  generally  rising  importg 
(amounts  given  in  rupees) : 

1906-07  Rs 135,50,85,676 

1907-08  Rs 162,71,55,234 

1908-09   Rs 143,89,75,796 

1909-10  Rs 154,48,36,214 

1910-11   Rs 169,05,72,729 

Exports  exceeded  imports,  and  the  war  has  made  difficulties  in 
the  way  of  realizing  payment.  (Amounts  given  in  pounds  ster- 
ling.) 

1911-12  £147,879,060 

1912-13  160,899,289 

1913-14  :. 162,807,900 

1914-15  118,323,300 

1915-16  128,356,619 

Indian  merchants  have  seen  the  swift  expansion  of  Japanese 
trade,  and  know  that  it  is  fostered  by  the  Japanese  Government, 
both  by  protection  and  with  bounties.  They  have  to  compete 
with  it  in  their  own  land.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  they  desire  an 
Indian  Government?  They  see  Japanese  goods  underselling  them 
and  flooding  their  own  markets.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  they  de- 
sire a  Home  Government,  that  will  put  duties  on  these  foreign 
goods  and  protect  their  own  products? 

The  furious  uprising  of  the  European  Associations,  ever  in- 
different to  politics  which  only  concern  Indian  interests,  has 
shown  them  that  their  trade  rivals  dread  the  transfer  of  power, 
because  they  fear  to  lose  the  unfair  privileges  and  advantages 
which  they  have  always  enjoyed,  since  the  humble  traders  of 
the  seventeenth  century  became  the  masters  of  India.  They 
are  not  accustomed  to  a  struggle  on  equal  terms,  and  the  pros- 
pect dismays  them.  They  want  privilege,  not  justice  and  a 
fair  field.  Much  of  their  fear  and  anger,  the  need  felt  by  Sir 
Hugh  Bray  for  English  dominance  for  the  protection  of  English 
interests,  lie  in  the  fact  that  they  dread  the  budget  of  a  Home 
Government,  even  more  than  they  dread  a  fair  trade  competition. 

The  Indian  merchants  now  realize  that  in  the  trade  war  after 
the  end  of  the  present  war,  they  will  go  down  unless  they  have 
power  in  their  own  country.  Trade,  commerce,  industry,  or- 
ganized by  the  countrymen  of  the  European  Chambers  of  Com- 
merce and  Trade  Associations,  mean  ruin  to  the  Indian  mer- 
chants, traders  and  manufacturers.  The  favoritism  of  Govern- 
ments and  English  banks  has  spelt  hard  struggle  during  the 
period  when  organization  was  wanting.  When  it  is  accom- 
panied by  organization  created  and  ruled  by  the  foreigners,  it 
will  spell  ruin.  Mr.  J.  W.  Root  has  rightly  observed  that  to 
give    Great    Britain,    under   present   circumstances — 

25 


The  control  over  Indian  foreign  trade  and  internal  industry  that 
would  be  secured  by  a  common  tariff  would  be  an  unpardonable  iniquity. 
.  .  .  Can  it  be  conceived  that  were  India's  fiscal  arrangements  placed 
to  any  considerable  extent  under  the  control  of  British  legislators,  they 
would  not  be  regulated  with  an  eye  to  British  interests?  Intense  jealousy 
of  India  is  always  cropping  up  In  everything  affecting  fiscal  or  industrial 
legislation. 

Indian  merchants  are  fairly  alive  to  this  danger,  and  to 
avert  it  they  are  welcoming  Home  Rule. 

The  merchants  also  realize  that  fiscal  autonomy  can  only 
come  with  political  automony.  Only  the  illogical  demand  fiscal 
autonomy  and  reject  Home  Rule.  A  budget  framed  by  an  In- 
dian Finance  Member  would  aim  at  a  much  increased  expendi- 
ture on  education,  sanitation  and  irrigation— ran  expenditure 
that  would  result  in  increased  capacity  and  increased  health  for 
the  citizens  and  increased  productiveness  for  the  land.  Rail- 
ways would  be  constructed  out  of  loans  raised  for  the  partic- 
ular project,  not  out  of  revenue.  Administration  charges  would 
be  reduced  by  the  reduction  of  salaries  and  greater  economy. 
They  have  increased  in  a  decade  by  Rs.   160  millions. 

On  the  revenue  side,  the  taxation  on  land  would  be  lightened 
so  that  cultivators  might  make  a  decent  living  by  their  labour. 
Exports  of  Indian  monopolies  such  as  jute  and  indigo,  would 
be  heavily  taxed.  Imports  would  be  taxed  according  to  India's 
needs,  and  heavy  duties  laid  on  bounty-fed  products.  Imported 
liquors  would  carry  a  prohibitory  duty,  and  they  were  imported 
in  1910-11  to  the  value  of  Rs.  1,89,81,666.  Provisions,  which 
were  imported  to  the  value  of  over  3  crores  of  rupees,  might 
also  be  heavily  taxed,  being  a  luxury.  Sugar  rose  in  five  years 
from  10  crores  of  rupees  to  14  crores,  and  should  be  heavily 
taxed,  so  as  to  encourage  its  growth  here.  Cotton  piece  goods 
have  risen  from  37  crores  to  41  crores  and  India  should  supply 
herself,  as  well  as  with  silk  piece  goods,  risen  from  1  2-3  crores 
to  2  3-4  crores.  Army  expenditures  at  the  moment  cannot  be 
reduced,  but  later  territorial  armies  would  be  raised  and  large 
reserves  gradually  formed.  For  a  time  English  troops  would 
remain,  as  in  the  South  African  Union,  but  the  short  service 
system  would  be  abolished  and  recruiting  charges  reduced. 

Even  so  hasty  a  glance  over  the  economic  condition  of  India 
makes  very  plain  the  reasons  for  the  awakening  of  Indian  mer- 
chants, and  their  entry  into  the  Home  Rule  camp. 

(c)  The  Awakening  of  the  Women 
The  position  of  women  in  the  ancient  Aryan  civilization  was 
a  very  noble  one.*  The  great  majority  married,  becoming,  as 
Manu  said,  the  Light  of  the  Home;  some  took  up  the  ascetic  life, 
remained  unmarried,  and  sought  the  knowledge  or  Brahman, 
The  story  of  the  Rani  Damayanti,  to  whom  her  husband's  min- 
isters came,  when  they  were  troubled  by  the  Raja's  gambling; 
that  of  Gandhari,  in  the  Council  of  Kings  and  warrior  Chiefs, 

26 


remonstrating  with  her  headstrong  son;  in  later  days,  those  of 
Padmavati  of  Chittoor,  of  Mirabai  of  Marwar,  the  sweet  poetess, 
of  Tarabai  of  Thoda,  the  warrior,  of  Chand  Bibi,  the  defender 
of  Ahmednagar,  of  Ahalya  Bai  of  Indore,  the  Great  Ruler — 
all  these   and   countless  others  are  Well  known. 

Only  in  the  last  five  or  six  generations  has  the  Indian  woman 
slipped  away  from  her  place  at  her  husband's  side,  and  left 
him  unhelped  in  his  public  life.  Even  now,  they  wield  great 
influence  over  husband  and  son,  but  lack  thorough  knowledge 
to  aid.  Culture  has  never  forsaken  them,  but  the  English  edu- 
cation of  their  husbands  and  sons,  with  the  neglect  of  Samskrit 
and  the  Vernacular,  have  made  a  barrier  between  the  culture 
of  the  husband  and  that  of  the  wife,  and  have  shut  the  woman 
out  from  her  old  sympathy  with  the  larger  life  of  men.  While 
the  interests  of  the  husband  have  widened,  those  of  the  wife 
have  narrowed.  The  materializing  of  the  husband  has  tended 
also,  by  reaction,  to  render  the  wife's  religion  less  broad  and 
wise,  and  by  throwing  her  on  the  family  priest  for  guidance 
in  religion,  instead,  as  of  old,  on  her  husband,  has  made  the 
religion  entirely  one  of  devotion;  and  lacking  the  strong  stim- 
ulus of  knowledge,  it  more  easily  slides  down  into  superstition, 
into  dependence  on  forms  not  understood. 

The  wish  to  save  their  sons  from  the  materializing  results 
of  English  education  awoke  keen  sympathy  among  Indian  moth- 
ers with  the  movement  to  make  Hinduism  an  integral  part  of 
education.  It  was,  perhaps,  the  first  movement  in  modern  days 
which  aroused  among  them  in  all  parts  of  India  a  keen  and 
living  interest. 

Then  the  troubles  of  Indians  outtiide  India  roused  the  ever 
quick  sympathy  of  Indian  women,  and  the  attack  in  South 
Africa  on  the  sacredness  of  Indian  marriage  drew  large  numbers 
of  them  out  of  their  homes  to  protest  against  the  wrong. 

The  Partition  of  Bengal  was  bitterly  resented  by  Bengali 
women,  and  was  another  factor  in  the  outward  turning  change. 
When  the  editor  of  an  Extremist  newspaper  was  prosecuted  for 
sedition,  convicted  and  sentenced,  500  Bengali  women  went  to 
his  mother  to  show  their  sympathy,  not  by  condolences,  but  by 
congratulations.  Such  was  the  feeling  of  the  well  born  women 
of  Bengal. 

The  indentured  labor  question,  involving  the  dishonor  of  wo- 
men, again  moved  them  deeply,  and  even  sent  a  deputation  to 
the  Viceroy  composed  of  women. 

These  were,  perhaps,  the  chief  outer  causes;  but  deep  in  the 
heart  of  India's  daughters  arose  the  Mother's  voice,  calling  on 
them  to  help  her  to  arise,  and  to  be  once  more  mistress  in  her 
own  household.  Indian  women,  nursed  on  her  old  literature, 
with  its  wonderful  ideals  of  womanly  perfection,  could  not  re- 
main indifferent  to  the  great  movement  for  India's  liberty. 
And   during   the   last   few   years   the   hidden   fire   long   burning 

27 


in  their  hearts,  fire  of  love  to  Bharatamata,  fire  of  resentment 
against  the  lessened  influence  of  the  religion  which  they  pas- 
sionately love,  instinctive  dislike  of  the  foreigner  as  ruling  in 
their  land,  have  caused  a  marvelous  awakening.  The  strength 
of  the  Home  Rule  movement  is  rendered  tenfold  greater  by 
the  adhesion  to  it  of  large  numbers  of  women,  who  bring  to  its 
helping  the  uncalculating  heroism,  the  endurance,  the  self-sacri- 
fice, of  the  feminine  nature.  Our  League's  best  recruits  and  re- 
cruiters are  among  the  women  of  India,  and  the  women  of 
Madras  boast  that  they  marched  in  procession  when  the  men 
were  stopped,  and  that  their  prayers  in  the  temples  set  the 
interned  captives  free.  Home  Rule  has  become  so  intertwined 
with  religion  by  the  prayers  offered  up  in  the  great  Southern 
Temples — sacred  places  of  pilgrimage — and  spreading  from  them 
to  village  temples,  and  also  by  its  being  preached,  up  and  down 
the  country,  by  Sadhus  and  Sannyasins  that  it  has  become  in 
the  minds  of  the  women  and  of  the  ever-religious  masses,  in- 
extricably intertwined  with  religion.  That  is,  in  this  country, 
the  surest  way  of  winning  alike  the  women  of  the  higher 
classes  and  the  men  and  women  villagers.  And  that  is  why  I 
have  said  that  the  two  words,  "Home  Rule,"  have  become  a 
Mantram. 

(t)     The  Awakening  of  the  Masses 

This  is  another  startling  phenomenon  of  our  times,  due  of 
late  to  the  teaching  of  Sadhus  and  Sannyasins  and  the  cam- 
paign of  prayer,  just  mentioned,  but  much  more  to  the  steady 
influence  of  the  educated  classes  permeating  the  masses  for 
very  many  years,  the  classes  which,  as  we  shall  see,  have  their 
roots  struck  deep  in  the  villages.  It  must  be  remembered  that 
the  raiyat,  though  innocent  of  English,  has  a  culture  of  his 
own,  made  up  of  old  traditions  and  legends  and  folk-lore,  com- 
ing down  from  time  immemorial.  He  is  religious,  knows  the 
great  laws  of  Karma  and  Reincarnation,  is  industrious  and 
shrewd.  He  cares  very  little  for  who  is  the  "Sirkar,"  and  very 
much  for  the  agents  who  come  to  collect  his  tax,  or  to  meddle 
with  his  fields.  In  the  old  days,  which  for  him  still  live,  the 
Panchayat  managed  the  village  affairs,  and  he  was  prosperous 
and  contented,  save  when  the  King's  tax  gatherer  came,  or  sol- 
diers harried  his  village.  These  were  inevitable  natural  evils, 
like  drought  or  flood,  and  if  a  raid  came  or  an  invasion,  they 
felt  they  were  suffering  with  their  King,  and  in  the  tax  they 
were  sharing  with  their  King,  whereas  they  are  crushed  now 
in  an  iron  machinery,  without  the  human  nexus  that  used  to 
exist. 

Home  Rule  has  touched  the  raiyat  through  his  village  life, 
where  the  present  order  presses  hardly  upon  him  in  ways 
that  I  shall  refer  to  when  dealing  with  agricultural  conditions. 

28 


He  resents  the  rigid  payment  of  tax  in  money  instead  of  the 
variable  tax  in  kind,  the  King's  share  of  the  produce.  He  re- 
sents the  frequent  resettlements  which  force  him  to  borrow 
from  the  money  lender  to  meet  the  higher  claim.  He  wants  the 
old  Panchayat  back  again;  he  wants  that  his  village  shall  be 
managed  by  himself  and  his  fellows,  and  he  wants  to  get  rid 
of  the  tyranny  of  petty  officials,  who  have  replaced  the  old 
useful  communal  servants. 

We  cannot  leave  out  of  the  causes  which  have  helped  to 
awaken  the  masses  the  influence  of  the  Co-operative  Movement, 
and  the  visits  paid  to  villages  by  educated  men  for  lectures 
on  sanitation,  hygiene,  and  other  subjects.  Messrs.  Moreland 
and  Ewing,  writing  in  the  Quarterly  Review,  remarked: 

The  change  of  attitude  on  the  part  of  the  peasant,  coupled  with  the 
progress  made  in  organization  mainly  through  the  co-operative  propa- 
ganda, is  the  outstanding  achievement  of  the  past  decade,  and  at  the 
same  time  the  chief  ground  for  the  recent  confidence  with  which  agri- 
cultural reformers  can  now  face  the  future. 

In  many  parts  of  the  country  where  conferences  are  carried 
on  in  the  vernacular,  the  raiyats  attend  in  large  numbers,  and 
often  take '  part  in  the  practical  discussions  on  local  affairs 
They  have  begun  to  hope,  and  to  feel  that  they  are  a  part  of 
the  great  National  movement,  and  that  for  them  also  a  better 
day  is  dawning. 

The  submerged  classes  have  also  felt  the  touch  of  a  ray  of 
hope,  and  are  lifting  up  their  bowed  heads,  and  claiming,  with 
more  and  more  definiteness,  their  place  in  the  household  of 
the  mother.  Movements  created  by  themselves,  or  originating 
in  the  higher  castes,  have  been  stirring  in  them  a  sense  of 
self-respect.  The  Brahmanas,  awakening  to  a  sense  of  their 
long  neglected  duty,  have  done  much  to  help  them,  and  the 
prospect  of  their  future  brightens  year  by  year. 

By  a  just  Karma  the  higher  castes  are  finding  that  attempts 
are  being  made  by  official  and  non-ofllcial  Europeans  to  stir 
this  class  into  opposition  to  Home  Rule.  They  play  upon  the 
contempt  with  which  they  had  been  treated,  and  threatened 
them  with  a  return  of  it  if  "Brahmana  Rule,"  as  they  call  it, 
is  gained.  Twenty  years  ago  and  more,  I  ventured  to  urge  the 
danger  to  Hindu  society  that  was  hidden  within  the  neglect 
of  the  submerged,  and  the  folly  of  making  it  profitable  for 
them  to  embrace  Islam  or  Christianity,  which  offered  them  a 
higher  social  status.  Much  has  been  done  since  then,  but  it 
is  only  a  drop  in  the  ocean  needed.  They  know  very  well,  of 
course,  that  all  the  castes,  not  the  highest  alone,  are  equally 
guilty,  but  that  is  a  sorry  comfort.  Large  numbers  of  them 
are,  happily,  willing  to  forget  the  past  and  to  work  with  their 
Indian  fellow  countrymen  for  the  future.     It  is  the  urgent  duty 

29 


of  every  lover  of  the  Mother  land  to  draw  these,  her  neglected 
children,   into   the   common    home. 

Mr.  Gandhi's  capital  idea  of  a  monster  petition  for  the  Con- 
gress-League scheme,  for  which  signatures  were  only  to  be 
taken  after  careful  explanation  of  its  scope  and  meaning,  has 
proved  to  be  an  admirable  method  of  political  propaganda.  The 
soil  in  the  Madras  Presidency  had  been  well  prepared  by  a 
wide  distribution  of  popular  literature,  and  the  Propaganda 
Committee  had  scattered  over  the  land  in  the  vernacular  a 
simple  explanation  of  Home  Rule.  The  result  of  active  work 
in  the  villages  during  the  last  year  showed  itself  in  the  gath- 
ering in  less  than  a  month  of  nearly  a  million  signatures.  They 
have  been  taken  in  duplicate,  so  that  we  have  a  record  of  a 
huge  number  of  people,  interested  in  Home  Rule,  and  the  hosts 
will  increase  in  ever  widening  circles  preparing  for  the  coming 
Freedom. 

Why  India  Demands  Home  Rule 

India  demands  Home  Rule  for  two  reasons,  one  essential 
and  vital,  the  other  less  important  but  weighty:  First,  because 
Freedom  is  the  birthright  of  every  nation;  secondly,  because 
her  most  important  interests  are  now  made  subservient  to  the 
interests  of  the  British  Empire  without  her  consent,  and  her 
resources  are  not  utilized  for  her  greatest  needs.  It  is  enough 
only  to  mention  the  money  spent  on  her  army,  not  for  local 
defense  but  for  imperial  purposes,  as  compared  with  that  spent 
on  primary  education. 

I.     THE    VITAL    REASON 

(a)  What  Is  a  Nation? 
Self-government  is  necessary  to  the  self-respect  and  dignity 
of  a  people;  other  government  emasculates  a  nation,  lowers  its 
character,  and  lessens  its  capacity.  The  wrong  done  by  the 
Arms  Act,  which  Raja  Rampal  Singh  voiced  in  the  Second 
Congress  as  a  wrong  which  outweighed  all  the  benefits  of 
British  rule,  was  its  weakening  and  debasing  effect  on  Indian 
manhood.  "We  cannot,"  he  declared,  "be  grateful  to  it  for  de- 
grading our  natures,  for  systematically  crushing  out  all  martial 
spirit,  for  converting  a  race  of  soldiers  and  heroes  into  a  timid 
flock  of  quill-driving  sheep."  This  was  done  not  by  the  fact 
that  a  man  did  not  carry  arms — few  carry  them  in  England — 
but  that  men  were  deprived  of  the  right  to  carry  them.  A 
nation,  an  individual,  cannot  develop  his  capacities  to  the  ut- 
most without  Liberty.  And  this  is  recognized  everywhere  ex- 
cept in  India.     As  Mazzini  truly  said: 

God  has  written  a  line  of  His  thought  over  the  cradle  of  every  peo- 
ple. That  is  its  special  mission.  It  cannot  be  cancelled ;  it  must  be 
freely    developed. 

For  what  is  a  Nation?  It  is  a  spark  of  the  Divine  fire,  a 
fragment  of  the  Divine   Life,   outbreathed  into  the   world,  and 

30 


gathering  round  itself  a  mass  of  individuals,  men,  women  and 
children,  whom  it  binds  together  into  one.  Its  qualities,  its 
powers,  in  a  word,  its  type,  depend  on  the  fragment  of  the 
Divine  Life  embodied  in  it,  the  Life  which  shapes  it,  evolves 
it,  colors  it,  and  makes  it  One.  The  magic  of  Nationality  is  the 
feeling  of  oneness,  and  the  use  of  Nationality  is  to  serve  the 
world  in  the  particular  way  for  which  its  type  fits  it.  This 
is  what  Mazzini  called  "its  special  mission,"  the  duty  given  to^ 
It  by  God  in  its  birth-hour.  Thus  India  had  the  duty  of  spread-^ 
ing  the  idea  of  Dharma,  Persia  that  of  Purity,  Egypt  that  of 
Science,  Greece  that  of  Beauty,  Rome  that  of  Law.  But  to 
render  its  full  service  to  humanity  it  must  develop  along  its 
own  lines,  and  be  Self-determined  in  its  evolution.  It  must  be 
Itself  and  not  Another.  The  whole  world  suffers  where  a  Na- 
tionality is  distorted  or  suppressed  before  its  mission  to  the 
world  is  accomplished. 

(1))  The  Cry  for  Self-Rule 
Hence  the  cry  of  a  nation  for  freedom,  for  Self-Rule,  is  not 
a  cry  of  mere  selfishness  demanding  more  rights  that  it  may 
enjoy  more  happiness.  Even  in  that  there  is  nothing  wrong,  for 
happiness  means  fulness  of  life,  and  to  enjoy  such  fulness  is  a 
righteous  claim.  But  the  demand  for  Self-Rule  is  a  demand 
for  the  evolution  of  its  own  nature  for  the  Service  of  Humanity. 
It  is  a  demand  of  the  deepest  Spirituality,  an  expression  of  the 
longing  to  give  its  very  best  to  the  world.  Hence  dangers  can- 
not check  it,  nor  threats  appal,  nor  offerings  of  greater  pleas- 
ures lure  it  to  give  up  its  demand  for  Freedom.  In  the  adapted 
words  of  a  Christian  Scripture  it  passionately  cries:  "What 
shall  it  profit  a  nation  if  it  gain  the  whole  world  and  lose  its 
own  Soul?  What  shall  a  nation  give  in  exchange  for  its  Soul?" 
Better  hardship  and  freedom  than  luxury  and  thraldom.  This 
is  the  spirit  of  the  Home  Rule  movement,  and  therefore  it  can- 
not be  crushed,  it  cannot  be  destroyed,  it  is  eternal  and  ever 
young.  Nor  can  it  be  persuaded  to  exchange  its  birthright  for 
any  mess  of  efficiency  pottage  at  the  hands  of  bureaucracy. 

(c)  Stunting  the  Race 
Coming  closer  to  the  daily  life  of  the  people  as  individuals, 
we  see  that  the  character  of  each  man,  woman  and  child  is  de- 
graded and  weakened  by  a  foreign  administration,  and  this 
is  most  keenly  felt  by  the  best  Indians.  Speaking  on  the  em- 
ployment of  Indians  in  the  public  service,  Gopal  Krishna  Gok- 
hale  said: 

A  kind  of  dwarfing  or  stunting  of  the  Indian  race  is  going  on  under 
the  present  system.  We  must  live  all  the  days  of  our  life  in  an  at- 
mosphere of  inferiority,  and  the  tallest  of  us  must  bend,  in  order  that 
the  exigencies  of  the  system  may  be  satisfied.  The  upward  impulse,  if 
I  may  use  such  an  expression,  which  every  school  boy  at  Eton  or  Harrow 
may  feel,  that  he  may  one  day  be  Gladstone,  a  Nelson,  or  a  Wellington, 

31 


and  which  may  draw  forth  the  best  efforts  of  which  he  is  capable,  that 
is  denied  to  us.  The  full  height  to  which  our  manhood  is  capable  of 
rising  can  never  be  reached  by  us  under  the  present  system.  The  moral 
elevation  which  every  Self-Governing  people  feel  cannot  be  felt  by  us. 
Our  administrative  and  military  talents  must  gradually  disappear  owing 
to  sheer  disuse,  till  at  last  our  lot,  as  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of 
water  in  our  own   country,   is  stereotyped. 

The  Hon.  Mr.  Bhupendranath  Basu  has  spoken  on  similar 
lines: 

A  bureaucratic  administration,  conducted  by  an  imported  agency,  and 
centering  all  power  in  its  hands,  and  undertaking  all  responsibility,  has 
acted  as  a  dead  weight  on  the  Soul  of  India,  stifling  in  us  all  sense  of 
initiative,  for  the  lack  of  which  we  are  condemned,  atrophying  the 
nerves  of  action  and,  what  is  most  serious,  necessarily  dwarfing  in  us 
all   feeling  of  self-respect. 

In  this  connection  the  warning  of  Lord  Salisbury  to  Cooper's 
Hill  students  is  significant: 

No  system  of  Government  can  be  permanently  safe  where  there  is  a 
feeling  of  inferiority  or  of  mortification  affecting  the  relation  between 
the  governing  and  the  governed.  There  is  nothing  I  would  more  ear- 
nestly wish  to  impress  upon  all  who  leave  this  country  for  the  purpose 
of  governing  India  than  that,  if  they  choose  to  be  so,  they  are  the  only 
enemies  England  has  to  fear.  They  are  the  persons  who  can,  if  they 
will,  deal  a  blew  of  the  deadliest  character  at  the  future  rule  of  England. 

I  have  ventured  to  urge  this  danger,  which  has  increased  of 
late  years,  in  consequence  of  the  growing  self-respect  of  the  In- 
dians. But  the  ostrich  policy  is  thought  to  be  preferable  in  my 
part  of  the  country. 

This  stunting  of  the  race  begins  with  the  education  of  the  child. 
The  schools  differentiate  between  British  and  Indian  teachers; 
the  Colleges  do  the  same.  The  students  see  first-class  Indians 
superseded  by  young  and  third-rate  foreigners;  the  Principal  of 
a  College  should  be  a  foreigner;  foreign  history  is  more  important 
than  Indian!  to  have  written  on  English  villages  is  a  qualification 
for  teaching  economics  in  India;  the  whole  atmosphere  of  the 
School  and  College  emphasises  the  superiority  of  the  foreigner, 
even  when  the  professors  abstain  from  open  assertion  thereof. 
The  Education  Department  controls  the  education  given,  and  it 
is  planned  on  foreign  models,  and  its  object  is  to  serve  foreign 
rather  than  native  ends,  to  make  docile  Government  servants 
rather  than  patriotic  citizens;  high  spirits,  courage,  self-respect 
are  not  encouraged,  and  docility  is  regarded  as  the  most  precious 
quality  in  the  student;  pride  in  country,  patriotism,  ambition,  are 
looked  on  as  dangerous,  and  English  instead  of  Indian,  Ideals 
are  exalted;  the  blessing  of  a  foreign  rule  and  the  incapacity  of 
Indians  to  manage  their  own  affairs  are  constantly  inculcated. 
What  wonder  that  boys  thus  trained  often  turn  out,  as  men,  time- 
servers  and  sycophants,  and,  finding  their  legitimate  ambitions 
frustrated,  become  selfish  and  care  little  for  the  public  weal? 
Their  own  inferiority  has  been  so  driven  into  them  during  their 
most  impressionable  years,  that  they  do  not  even  feel  what  Mr. 
Asquith  called  the  "intolerable  degradation  of  a  foreign  yoke." 

32 


(d)     India's  Rights 

It  is  not  a  question  whether  the  rule  is  good  or  bad.  German 
efficiency  in  Germany  is  far  greater  than  English  efficiency  in 
England ;  the  Germans  were  better  fed,  had  more  amusements  and 
leisure,  less  crushing  poverty  than  the  English.  But  would  any 
Englishman  therefore  desire  to  see  Germans  occupying  all  the 
highest  positions  in  England?  Why  not?  Because  the  righteous 
self-respect  and  dignity  of  the  free  man  revolt  against  foreign 
domination,  however  superior.  As  Mr.  Asquith  said  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  War,  such  a  condition  was  "inconceivable  and 
would  be  intolerable."  Why  then  is  it  the  one  conceivable  system 
here  in  India?  Why  is  it  not  felt  by  all  Indians  to  be  intolerable? 
It  is  because  it  has  become  a  habit,  bred  in  us  from  childhood, 
to  regard  the  sahab-log  as  our  natural  superiors,  and  the  greatest 
injury  British,  rule  has  done  to  Indians  is  to  deprive  them  of  the 
natural  instinct  born  in  all  free  peoples,  the  feeling  of  an  in- 
herent rigHt  to  self  determination,  to  be  themselves.  Indian  dress, 
Indian  food,  Indian  ways,  Indian  customs,  are  all  looked  on  as 
second-rate;  Indian  mother-tongue  and  Indian  literature  cannot 
make  an  educated  man,  Indians  as  well  as  Englishmen  take  it 
for  granted  that  the  natural  rights  of  every  Nation  do  not  belong 
to  them;  they  claim  "a  larger  share  in  the  Government  of  the 
country,"  instead  of  claiming  the  Government  of  their  own  coun- 
try, and  they  are  expected  to  feel  grateful  for  "boons,"  for  con- 
cessions. Britain  is  to  say  what  she  will  give.  The  whole  thing 
is  wrong,  topsy-turvy,  irrational.  Thank  God  that  India's  eyes 
are  opening;  that  myriads  of  her  people  realize  that  they  are 
men,  with  a  man's  right  to  freedom  in  his  ov/n  country,  a  man's 
right  to  manage  his  own  affairs.  India  is  no  longer  on  her  knees 
for  boons;  she  is  on  her  feet  for  Rights.  It  is  because  I  have 
taught  this,  that  the  English  in  India  misunderstand  me,  and  call 
me  seditious;  it  is  because  I  have  taught  this,  that  I  am  Presi- 
dent of  this  Congress  to-day. 

This  may  seem  strong  language,  because  the  plain  truth  is  not 
usually  put  in  India.  But  this  is  what  every  Britain  feels  in 
Britain  for  his  own  country,  and  what  every  Indian  should  feel 
in  India  for  his.  This  is  the  Freedom  for  which  the  Allies  are 
fighting;  this  is  Democracy,  the  Spirit  of  the  Age.  And  this  is 
what  every  true  Briton  will  feel  is  India's  Right,  the  moment 
India  claims  it  for  herself,  as  she  is  claiming  it  now.  When 
this  Right  is  gained,  then  will  the  tie  between  India  and  Great 
Britain  become  a  golden  link  of  mutual  love  and  service,  and  the 
iron  chain  of  a  foreign  yoke  will  fall  away.  We  shall  live  and 
work  side  by  side,  with  no  sense  of  distrust  and  dislike,  working 
as  brothers  for  common  ends.  And  from  that  union  shall  arise 
the  mightiest  Empire,  or  rather  Commonwealth,  that  the  world 
has  ever  known,  a  Commonwealth  that,  in  God's  good  time,  shall 
put  an  end  to  War. 

33 


II.     THE  SECONDARY  REASONS 

(a)     Tests  of  Efficiency 

The  Secondary  Reasons  for  the  present  demand  for  Home  Rule 
may  be  summed  up  in  the  blunt  statement:  "The  present  rule, 
while  efficient  in  less  important  matters  and  in  those  which  con- 
cern British  interests,  is  inefficient  in  the  greater  matters  on 
which  the  healthy  life  and  happiness  of  the  people  depend." 
Looking  at  outer  things,  such  as  external  order,  posts  and  tele- 
graphs— except  where  political  agitators  are  concerned — main 
roads,  railways,  etc.,  foreign  visitors,  who  expected  to  find  a 
semi-savage  country,  hold  up  their  hands  in  admiratipn.  But  if 
they  saw  the  life  of  the  people,  the  masses  of  struggling  clerks 
trying  to  educate  their  children  on  Rs  25  (28sh  Qi^d)  a  month, 
the  masses  of  laborers  with  one  meal  a  day,  and  the  huts  in  which 
they  live,  they  would  find  cause  for  thought.  And  if  the  educated 
men  talked  freely  with  them,  they  would  be  surprised  at  their 
bitterness.  Gopal  Krishna  Gokhale  put  the  whole  matter  very 
plainly  in  1911: 

One  of  the  fundamental  conditions  of  tlie  peculiar  position  of  the 
British  Government  in  this  country  is  that  it  should  be  a  continuously 
progressive  Government.  I  think  all  thinking  men,  to  whatever  com- 
munity they  belong,  will  accept  that.  Now,  I  suggest  four  tests  to 
judge  whether  the  Government  is  progressive,  and  further,  whether  it 
is  continuously  progressive.  The  first  test  that  I  would  applpy  is  what 
measures  it  adopts  for  the  moral  and  material  improvement  of  the  mass 
of  the  people,  and  under  these  measures  I  do  not  include  those  appli- 
ances of  modern  governments  which  the  British  Government  has  applied 
in  this  country,  because  they  were  appliances  necessary  for  its  very  ex- 
istence, though  they  have  benefited  the  people,  such  as  the  construc- 
tion of  railways,  the  introduction  of  post  and  telegraphs,  and  things 
of  that  kind.  By  measures  for  the  moral  and  material  improvement 
of  the  people,  I  mean  what  the  Government  does  for  education,  what 
the  Government  does  for  sanitation,  what  the  Government  does  foi 
agricultural  development,  and  so  forth.  That  is  my  first  test.  The  sec- 
ond  test  that  I  would  apply  is  what  steps  the  Government  takes  to 
give  us  a  larger  share  in  the  administration  of  our  local  affairs — in  mu- 
nicipalities and  local  boards.  My  third  test  is  what  voice  the  Govern- 
ment gives  us  in  its  councils — in  those  deliberative  assemblies,  where 
policies  are  considered.  And  lastly,  we  must  consider  hoVs^  far  Indiana 
are   admitted   into   the   ranks   of   the   public  service. 

(h)  A  Change  of  System  Needed — Officials 
Those  were  Gokhale's  tests,  and  Indians  can  supply  the  results 
of  their  knowledge  and  experience  to  answer  them.  But  before 
dealing  with  the  failure  to  meet  these  tests,  it  is  necessary  to 
state  here  that  it  is  not  a  question  of  blaming  men,  or  of  substi- 
tuting Indians  for  Englishmen,  but  of  changing  the  system  itself. 
It  is  a  commonplace  that  the  best  men  become  corrupted  by  the 
possession  of  irresponsible  power.  As  Bernard  Houghton  says: 
"The  possession  of  unchecked  power  corrupts  some  of  the  finer 
Qualities."  Officials  quite  honestly  come  to  believe  that  those  who 
try  to  change  the  system  are  undermining  the  security  of  the 
gtate.    They  identify  the  State  with  themselves,  so  that  criticism 

14 


of  them  is  seen  as  treason  to  the  State.  The  phenomenon  Is  well- 
known  in  history,  and  it  is  only  repeating  itself  in  India.  The 
same  writer — I  prefer  to  use  his  words  rather  than  my  own,  for 
he  expresses  exactly  my  own  views,  and  will  not  be  considered  to 
be  prejudiced  as  I  am  thought  to  be — cogently  remarks: 

He  (the  oflacial)  has  become  an  expert  in  reports  and  returns  and 
matters  of  routine  through  many  years  of  practice.  They  are  the  very 
warp  and  woof  of  his  braii.  He  has  no  ideas,  only  reflexes.  He  views 
with  acrid  disfavor  untried  conceptions.  From  being  constantly  pre- 
occupied with  the  manipulation  of  the  machine  he  regards  its  smooth 
working,  the  ordered  and  harmonious  regulation  of  glittering  pieces  of 
machinery,  as  the  highest  service  he  can  render  to  the  country  of  his 
adoption.  He  deetrmines  that  this  particular  cog  wheel  at  least  shall 
be  bright,  smooth,  silent,  and  with  absolutely  no  back-lash.  Not  unnat- 
urally in  course  of  time  he  comes  to  envisage  the  world  through  the 
strait  embrasure  of  an  office  window.  When  perforce  he  must  report 
on  new  proposals  he  will  place  in  the  forefront,  not  their  influence  on 
the  life  and  progress  of  the  people,  but  their  convenience  to  the  official 
hierarchy  and  the  manner  in  which  they  affect  its  authority.  Like  the 
monks  of  old,  or  the  squire  in  the  typical  English  village,  he  cherishes 
a  benevolent  interest  in  the  commonality,  and  is  quite  willing,  even 
eager,  to  take  a  general  interest  in  their  welfare,  if  only  they  do  not 
display  initiative  or  assert  themselves  in  opposition  to  himself  or  hia 
order.  There  is  much  in  this  proviso.  Having  come  to  regard  his  own 
judgment  as  almost  divine,  and  the  hierarchy  of  which  he  has  the  honour 
to  form  a  part  as  a  sacrosanct  institution,  he  tolerates  the  laity  so 
long  as  they  labour  quietly  and  peaceably  at  their  vocations  and  do 
not  presume  to  intermeddle  in  high  matters  of  State.  That  is  the 
heinous  offense.  And  frank  criticism  of  official  acts  touches  a  lower 
depth  still,  even  lese  majeste.  For  no  official  will  endure  criticism  from 
his  subordinates,  and  the  public,  who  lie  in  outer  darkness  beyond  the 
pale,  do  not,  in  his  estimation,  rank  even  with  his  subordinates.  How, 
then,  should  he  listen  with  patience  when  in  their  cavilling  way  they 
insinuate  that,  in  spite  of  the  labours  of  a  high-souled  bureaucracy,  all 
is  perhaps  not  for  the  best  in  the  best  of  all  possible  worlds — still  less 
when  they  suggest  reforms  that  had  never  occurred  even  to  him  or  to 
his  order,  and  may  clash  with  his  most  cherished  ideals?  It  Is  for  the 
officials  to  govern  the  country  ;  they  alone  have  been  initiated  into  the 
sacred  mysteries ;  they  alone  understand  the  secret  working  of  the  ma- 
chine. At  the  utmost  the  laity  may  tender  respectful  and  humble  sug- 
gestions for  their  consideration,  but  no  more.  As  for  those  who  dare 
to  think  and  act  for  themselves,  their  ignorant  folly  is  only  equaled 
by  their  arrogance.  It  is  as  though  a  handful  of  school  boys  were  to 
dictate  to  their  masters  alterations  in  the  traditional  time-table,  or  to 
insist  on  a  modified  curriculum.  .  .  .  These  worthy  people  (officials) 
confuse  manly  independence  with  disloyalty ;  they  cannot  conceive  of 
natives  except  either  as  rebels  or  as  timid  sheep. 

Other  quotations  on  the  effects  of  Bureaucracy  will  be  found  in 
Appendix  I. 

(c)     Non-Official  Anglo-Indians 

The  problem  becomes  more  complicated  by  the  existence  in 
India  of  a  small  but  powerful  body  of  the  same  race  as  the  higher 
officials;  there  are  only  122,919  English-born  persons  in  this  coun- 
try, while  there  are  255,000,000  in  the  British  Raj  and  another 
70,000,000  in  the  Indian  States,  more  or  less  affected  by  British 
influence.  As  a  rule,  the  non-officials  do  not  take  any  part  in 
politics,  being  otherwise  occupied;  but  they  enter  the  field  when 

35 


any  hope  arises  in  Indian  hearts  of  changes  really  beneficial  to 
the  Nation.    John  Stuart  Mill  observed  on  this  point: 

The  individuals  of  the  ruling  people  who  resort  to  foreign  country  to 
make  their  fortunes  are  of  all  others  those  who  most  need  to  be  held 
under  powerful  restraint.  They  are  always  one  of  the  chief  dilllculties 
of  the  Government.  Armed  with  the  prestige  and  filled  with  the  scorn- 
ful overbearingness  of  the  conquering  nation,  they  have  the  feelings  in- 
spired  by   absolute   power   without   its   sense   of   responsibility. 

Similarly,  Sir  John  Lawrence  wrote: 

The  difficulty  in  the  way  of  the  Government  of  India  acting  fairly  in 
these  matters  is  immense.  If  anything  is  done,  or  attempted  to  be 
done,  to  help  the  natives,  a  general  howl  is  raised,  which  reverberates 
in  England,  and  finds  sympathy  and  support  there.  I  feel  quite  bewil- 
dered sometimes  what  to  do.  Every  one  is,  in  the  abstract,  for  justice, 
moderation,  and  such  like  excellent  qualities ;  but  when  one  comes  to 
apply  such  principles  so  as  to  affect  anybody's  interests,  then  a  change 
comes  over  them. 

Keene,  speaking  of  the  principle  of  treating  equally  all  classes 
of  the  community,  says: 

The  application  of  that  maxim,  however,  could  not  be  made  without 
sometimes  provoking  opposition  among  the  handful  of  white  settlers 
in  India  who,  even  when  not  connected  with  the  administration,  claimed 
a  kind  of  class  ascendency  which  was  not  only  in  the  conditions  of  the 
country  but  also  in  the  nature  of  the  case.  It  was  perhaps  natural  that 
in  a  land  of  caste  the  compatriots  of  the  rulers  should  become — as  Lord 
Lytton  said — a  kind  of  "white  Brahmanas"  ;  and  it  was  certain  that, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  pride  of  race  and  the  possession  of  western 
civilization  created  a  sense  of  superiority,  the  display  of  which  was  un- 
graceful and  even  dangerous,  when  not  tempered  with  official  respon- 
sibility. This  feeling  had  been  sensitive  enough  in  the  days  of  Lord 
William  Bentinck,  when  the  class  referred  to  was  small  in  numbers 
and  devoid  of  influence.  It  was  now  botli  more  numerous,  and — by  rea- 
son of  its  connection  with  the  newspapers  of  Calcutta  and  of  London 
— it   was   far   better   able   to   make   its   passion   heard. 

During  Lord  Ripon's  sympathetic  administration  the  great  out- 
burst occurred  against  the  Ilbert  Bill  in  1883.  We  are  face  to 
face  with  a  similar  phenomenon  today,  when  we  see  the  European 
Associations  under  the  leadership  of  the  Madras  Mail,  the  English- 
man of  Calcutta,  the  Pioneer  of  Allahabad,  the  Civil  and  Military 
Gazette  of  Lahore,  with  their  Tory  and  Unionist  allies  in  the  Lon- 
don press,  and  with  the  aid  of  retired  Indian  officials  and  non- 
officials  in  England — desperately  resisting  the  Reforms  now  pro- 
posed. Their  opposition,  we  know,  is  a  danger  to  the  movement 
towards  Freedom,  and  even  when  they  have  failed  to  impress 
England — as  they  are  evidently  failing — they  will  try  to  minimise 
or  smother  here  the  reforms  which  a  statute  has  embodied.  The 
Minto-Morley  reforms  were  thus  robbed  of  their  usefulness,  and 
a  similar  attempt,  if  not  guarded  against,  will  be  made  when 
the  Congress-League  Scheme  is  used  as  the  basis  for  an  Act. 

(d)     The  Re-action  on  England 
We  cannot  leave  out  of  account  here  the  deadly  harm  done  to 
England  herself  by  this  un-English  system  of  rule  in  India.    Mr. 
Hobson  has  pointed  out: 

86 


As  our  free  Self-Governing  Colonies  have  furnish  hope,  encourage- 
ment, and  leading  to  the  popular  aspirations  in  Great  Britain,  not 
merely  by  practical  success  in  the  art  of  Self-Government,  but  by  the 
wafting  of  a  spirit  of  freedom  and  equality,  so  our  despotically  ruled 
dependencies  have  ever  served  to  damage  the  character  of  our  people 
by  feeding  the  habits  of  snobbish  subservience,  the  admiration  of  wealth 
and  rank,  the  corrupt  survivals  of  the  inequalitie?  of  feudalism.  .  .  . 
Cobden,  writing  in  1860  of  our  Indian  Empire,  put  this  pithy  question  : 
"Is  it  not  just  possible  that  we  may  become  corrupted  at  home  by  the 
reaction  of  arbitrary  political  maxims  in  the  East  upon  our  domestic 
politics,  just  as  Greece  and  Rome  were  demoralized  by  their  contact 
with  Asia?"  Not  merely  is  the  reaction  possible,  it  is  inevitable.  As 
the  despotic  portion  of  our  Empire  has  grown  in  area,  a  larger  number 
of  men,  trained  in  the  temper  and  methods  of  autocracy,  as  soldiers  and 
civil  oflScials  in  our  Crown  Colonies,  Protectorates  and  Indian  Empire, 
reinforced  by  numbers  of  merchants,  planters,  engineers,  and  overseers, 
whose  lives  have  been  those  of  a  superior  caste,  living  an  artificial  life 
removed  from  all  the  healthy  restraints  of  ordinary  European  society, 
have  returned  to  this  country,  bringing  back  the  characters,  sentiments 
and  ideas  imposed  by  this  foreign  environment. 

It  is  a  little  hard  on  the  I.C.S.,  that  they  should  be  foreigners 
here,  and  then,  when  they  return  to  their  native  land,  find  that 
they  have  become  foreigners  there  by  the  corrupting  influence 
with  which  they  are  surrounded  here.  We  import  them  as  raw 
material  to  our  own  disadvantage,  and  when  we  export  them  as 
manufactured  here.  Great  Britain  and  India  alike  suffer  from 
their  reactionary  tendencies.  The  results  are  unsatisfactory  to 
both  sides. 

/  (e)     The  First  Test  Applied 

Let  us  now  apply  Gokhale's  first  test.  What  has  the  Bureau- 
cracy done  for  "education,  sanitation,  agricultural  improvement, 
and  so  forth"?  I  must  put  the  facts  very  briefly,  but  they  are 
indisputable. 

Education — The  percentage  to  the  whole  population  of  children 
receiving  education  is  2.8,  the  percentage  having  risen  by  0.9 
since  Mr.  Gokhale  moved  his  Education  Bill  six  years  ago.  But 
even  this  percentage  is  illusory.  It  is  recognised  by  educationists 
that  children,  taught  for  less  than  four  years,  lose  what  they 
had  learned  during  that  time.  In  the  Educational  Statistics  (Brit- 
ish India)  for  1914-15,  we  find  that  6,333,668  boys  and  1,128,363 
girls  were  under  instruction,  7,463,031  children  in  all.  Of  these 
5,434,576  had  not  passed  the  Lower  Primary  Stage,  and  of  these 
1,680,561  could  not  even  read.  If  these  be  deducted  from  the  total, 
we  have  only  2,027,455  children  receiving  education  useful  to 
them,  giving  us  the  appalling  figure  of  83  per  cent.  The  money 
spent  on  the  5i/^  millions  might  as  well  be  thrown  into  the  Bay 
of  Bengal.  The  percentage  of  children  of  school-going  age  at- 
tending school  was  20.4  at  the  end  of  1915.  In  1913  the  Govern- 
ment of  India  put  the  number  of  pupils  at  4^^  millions;  this 
has  been  accomplished  in  59  years,  reckoning  from  Sir  Charles 
Wood's  Educational  Despatch  in  1854,  which  led  to  the  formation 

37 


of  the  Education  Department.  In  1870  an  Education  Act  was 
passed  in  Great  Britain,  the  condition  of  Education  in  England 
then  much  resembling  our  present  position;  grants-in-aid  in 
England  had  been  given  since  1833,  chiefly  to  Church  Schools. 
Between  1870  and  1881  free  and  compulsory  education  was  estab- 
lished, and  in  12  years  the  attendance  rose  from  43.3  to  nearly 
100  per  cent.  There  are  now  6,000,000  children  in  the  schools  of 
England  and  Wales  out  of  a  population  of  40  millions.  Japan, 
before  1872,  had  a  proportion  of  28  per  cent,  of  children  of  school- 
going  age  in  school,  nearly  8  over  our  present  proportion;  in  24 
years  the  percentage  was  raised  to  92,  and  in  28  years  education 
was  free  and  compulsory.  In  Baroda  education  is  free  and  largely 
compulsory  and  the  percentage  of  boys  is  100  per  cent.  Travan- 
core  has  81.1  per  cent  of  boys  and  33.2  of  girls.  Mysore  has 
45.8  of  boys  and  9.7  of  girls.  Baroda  spends  As.  6.6  per  head  on 
school-going  children,  British  India  As.  3.  Expenditure  on  edu- 
cation advanced  between  1882  and  1907  by  57  lakhs.  Land-revenue 
had  increased  by  8  crores,  military  expenditure  by  13  crores, 
civil  by  8  crores,  and  capital  outlay  on  railways  was  15  crores 
(I  am  quoting  G.  K.  Gokhale's  figures.).  He  ironically  calculated 
that,  if  the  population  did  not  increase,  every  boy  would  be  in 
school  115  years  hence,  and  every  girl  in  665  years.  Brother 
Delegates,  we  hope  to  do  it  more  quickly  under  Home  Rule.  I 
submit  that  in  Education  the  Bureaucracy  is  inefficient. 

Sanitation  and  Medical  Relief. — The  prevalence  of  plague, 
cholera,  and  above  all  malaria,  show  the  lack  of  sanitation  alike 
in  town  and  country.  This  lack  is-  one  of  the  causes  contributing 
(,to  the  low  average  life  period  in  India — 23.5  years.  In  England 
the  life-period  is  40  years,  in  New  Zealand  60.  The  chief  diffi- 
culty in  the  way  of  the  treatment  of  disease  is  the  encouragement 
of  the  foreign  system  of  medicine,  especially  in  rural  parts,  and 
the  withholding  of  grants  from  the  indigenous.  Government 
Hospitals,  Government  Dispensaries,  Government  doctors,  must 
all  be  on  the  foreign  system.  Ayurvaidic  and  Unani  medicines. 
Hospitals,  Dispensaries,  Physicians,  are  unrecognized,  and  to 
"cover"  the  latter  is  "infamous"  conduct.  Travancore  gives 
grants-in-aid  to  72  Vaidyashalas,  at  which  143,505  patients — 22,000 
more  than  in  allopathic  institutions — were  treated  in  1914-15 
(the  Report  issued  in  1917).  Our  Government  cannot  grapple 
with  the  medical  needs  of  the  people,  yet  will  not  allow  the 
people's  money  to  be  spent  on  the  systems  they  prefer.  Under 
Home  Rule,'  the  indigenous  and  foreign  systems  will  be  treated 
with  impartiality.  I  grant  that  the  allopathic  doctors  do  their 
utmost  to  supply  the  need,  and  show  great  self-sacrifice,  but  the 
need  is  too  vast  and  their  numbers  too  few.  Efficiency  on  their 
own  lines  in  this  matter  is  therefore  impossible  for  our  bureau- 
cratic Government;  their  fault  lies  in  excluding  the  indigenous 
systems,  which  they  have  not  condescended  to  examine  before  re- 

•  38 


Jecting  them.    The  result  is  that  in  sanitation  and  medical  relief 
the  Bureacracy  is  inefficient. 

Agricultural  Development — The  census  of  1911  gives  the  agri- 
cultural population  at  218.3  .millions.  Its  frightful  poverty  is  a 
matter  of  common  knowledge;  its  ever-increasing  load  of  indebt- 
edness has  been  dwelt  on  for  at  least  the  last  thirty  odd  years 
by  Sid  Dinshaw  E.  Wacha.  Yet  the  increasing  debt  is 
accompanied  with  increasing  taxation,  land-revenue  having 
risen,  as  just  stated,  in  25  years,  by  8  crores — 80,000,000 
— of  rupees.  In  addition  to  this  there  are  local  cesses, 
salt-tax,  etc.  The  salt-tax,  which  presses  most  hardly  on  the  very 
poor,  was  raised  in  the  last  budget  by  Rs.  9  millions.  The  inevit- 
able result  of  this  poverty  is  mal-nutrition,  resulting  in  low  vital- 
ity, lack  of  resistance  to  disease,  short  life-period,  huge  infantile 
mortality.  Gopal  Krishna  Gokhale,  no  mischievous  agitator,  re- 
peated in  1905  the  figures  often  quoted: 

Forty  millions  of  people,  according  to  one  great  Anglo-Indian  au- 
thority— Sir  William  Hunter — pass  through  life  with  only  one  meal  a 
day.  According  to  another  authority — Sir  Charles  Elliot — seventy  mil- 
lions of  people  in  India  do  not  know  what  it  is  to  have  their  hunger 
fully  satisfied  even  once  in  the  whole  course  of  the  year.  The  poverty 
of  the  people  of  India,  thus  considered  by  itself,  is  truly  appalling.  And 
If  this  is  the  state  of  things  after  a  hundred  years  of  your  rule,  you 
cannot  claim  that  your  principal  aim  in  India  has  been  the  promotion 
of  the  interests  of  the   Indian   people. 

It  is  sometimes  said:  "Why  harp  on  these  figures?  We  know 
them."  Our  answer  is  that  the  fact  is  ever  harping  in  the  stomach 
of  the  people,  and  while  it  continues,  we  cannot  cease  to  draw 
attention  to  it.  And  Gokhale  urged  that  "even  this  deplorable 
condition  has  been  further  deteriorating  steadily."  We  have  no 
figures  on  malnutrition  among  the  peasantry,  but  in  Madras  City, 
among  an  equally  poor  urban  population,  we  found  that  78  per 
cent,  of  our  pupils  were  reported,  after  a  medical  inspection,  to 
be  suffering  from  malnutrition.  And  the  spareness  of  frame,  the 
thinness  of  arms  and  legs,  the  pitiably  weak  grip  on  life,  speak 
without  words  to  the  seeing  eye.  It  needs  an  extraordinary  lack 
of  imagination  not  to  suffer  while  these  things  are  going  on. 

The  peasants'  grievances  are  many  and  have  been  voiced  year 
after  year  by  the  Congress.  The  Forest  Laws,  made  by  legislators 
inappreciative  of  village  difficulties,  press  hardly  on  them,  and 
only  in  a  small  number  of  places  have  Forest  Panchayads  been 
established.  In  the  few  cases  in  which  the  experiment  has  been 
made  the  results  have  been  good,  in  some  cases  marvellously  good. 
The  paucity  of  grazing  grounds  for  their  cattle,  lack  of  green 
manure  to  feed  their  impoverished  lands,  absence  of  fencing 
round  the  forests  so  that  the  cattle  stray  in  when  feeding, 
are  impounded  and  have  to  be  redeemed,  the  fines  and  other  pun- 
ishments imposed  for  offences  ill-understood,  the  want  of  wood  for 
fuel,  for  tools,  for  repairs,  the  uncertain  distribution  of  the  avail- 

89 


able  water,  all  these  troubles  are  discussed  in  villages  and  in  local 
Conferences.  The  Arms  Act  oppresses  them,  by  leaving  them  de- 
fenceless against  wild  beasts  and  wild  men.  The  union  of  Judicial 
and  Executive  functions  makes  justice  often  inaccessible,  and 
always  costly  both  in  money  and  in  time.  The  village  officials 
naturally  care  more  to  please  the  Tausildar  and  the  Collector  than 
the  villagers,  to  whom  they  are  in  no  way  responsible.  And  fac- 
tions flourish,  because  there  is  always  a  third  party  to  whom  to 
resort,  who  may  be  flattered  if  his  rank  be  high,  bribed  if  it  be 
low,  whose  favour  can  be  gained  in  either  case  by  cringing  and 
by  subservience  and  tale-bearing.  As  regards  the  condition  of 
agriculture  in  India,  and  the  poverty  of  the  agricultural  popula- 
tion, the  Bureaucracy  is  inefficient. 

The  application  of  Mr.  Gokhale's  first  test  to  Indian  handicrafts, 
to  the  strengthening  of  weak  industries  and  the  creation  of  new, 
to  the  care  of  waterways  for  traffic  and  of  the  coast  transport 
shipping,  the  protection  of  indigo  and  other  indigenous  dyes 
against  their  German  synthetic  rivals,  etc.,  would  show  similar 
answers.  We  are  suffering  now  from  the  supineness  of  the  Bu- 
reaucracy as  regards  the  development  of  the  resources  of  the 
country,  by  its  careless  indifference  to  the  usurping  by  Germans 
of  some  of  those  resources,  and  even  now  they  are  pursuing  a 
similar  policy  of  laissez  faire  towards  Japanese  enterprise,  which, 
leaning  on  its  own  Government,  is  taking  the  place  of  Germany 
in  shouldering  Indians  out  of  their  own  natural  heritage. 

In  all  prosperous  countries  crafts  are  found  side  by  side  with 
agriculture,  and  they  lend  each  other  mutual  support.  The  ex- 
treme poverty  of  Ireland,  and  the  loss  of  more  than  half  its  pop- 
ulation by  emigration,  were  the  direct  result  of  the  destruction 
of  its  wool-industry  by  Great  Britain,  and  the  consequent  throw- 
ing of  the  population  entirely  on  the  land  for  subsistence.  A 
similar  phenomenon  has  resulted  here  from  a  similar  cause,  but 
on  a  far  more  widespread  scale.  And  liere,  a  novel  and  portentous 
change  for  India,  "a  considerable  landless  class  is  developing, 
which  involves  economic  danger,"  as  the  Imperial  Gazetteer  re- 
marks, comparing  the  census  returns  of  1891  and  1901:  "The 
ordinary  agricultural  labourers  are  employed  on  the  land  only 
during  the  busy  seasons  of  the  year,  and  in  slack  times  a  few 
are  attracted  to  large  trade-centers  for  temporary  work."  One 
recalls  the  influx  into  England  of  Irish  labourers  at  harvest  time. 
Professor  Radhakamal  Mukerji  has  laid  stress  on  the  older  con- 
ditions of  village  life;   he  says: 

The  village  is  still  almost  self-sufla.cing,  and  is  in  itself  an  economic 
unit.  The  village  agriculturist  grows  all  the  food  necessary  for  the 
inhabitants  of  the  village.  The  smith  makes  the  ploughshares  for  the 
cultivator,  and  the  few  iron  utensils  required  for  the  household.  He 
supplies  these  to  the  people,  but  does  not  get  money  in  return.  He  is 
recompensed  by  mutual  services  from  his  fellow  villagers.  The  potter 
supplies  him  with  pots,  the  weaver  with  cloth,  and  the  oilman  with  oil. 

40 


Prom  the  cultivator  each  of  these  artisans  receives  his  traditional  share 
of  grain.  Thus  almost  all  the  economic  transactions  are  carried  on 
without  the  use  of  money.  To  the  villagers  money  is  only  a  store  of 
value,  not  a  medium  of  exchange.  When  they  happen  to  be  rich  in 
money,  they  hoard  it  either  in  coins  or  make  ornaments  made  of  gold 
and  silver. 

The  conditions  are  changing  in  consequence  of  the  pressure 
of  the  poverty  driving  the  villagers  to  the  city,  where  they  learn 
to  substitute  the  competition  of  the  town  for  the  mutual  help- 
fulness of  the  village.  The  difference  of  feeling,  the  change 
from  trustfulness  to  suspicion,  may  be  seen  by  visiting  villages 
which  are  in  the  vicinity  of  a  town  and  comparing  their  vil- 
lagers with  those  who  inhabit  villages  in  purely  rural  areas. 
The  economic  and  moral  deterioration  can  only  be  checked  by 
the  re-establishment  of  a  healthy  and  interesting  village  life 
and  this  depends  upon  the  re-establishment  of  the  Panchayat 
as  the  unit  of  government,  a  question  which  I  deal  with  pres- 
ently. Village  industries  would  then  revive  and  an  intercom- 
municating network  would  be  formed  by  Co-operative  Societies. 
Mr.  C.  P.  Rameswami  Aiyar  says  in  his  pamphlet,  Go-Operative 
Societies  and  Panchayats: 

The  one  method  by  which  this  evil  (emigration  to  towns)  can  be  ar- 
x'ested  and  the  economic  and  social  standards  of  life  of  the  rural  peo- 
ple elevated  is  by  the  inauguration  of  healthy  Panchayats  in  conjunction 
with  the  foundation  of  co-operative  institutions,  which  will  have  the 
effect  of  resuscitating  village  industries,  and  of  creating  organized  social 
forces.  The  Indian  village,  when  rightly  reconstructed,  would  be  an 
excellent  foundation  for  well-developed  co-operative  industrial  organ- 
ization. 

Again : 

The  resuscitation  of  the  village  system  has  other  bearings,  not  usually 
considered  in  connection  with  the  general  subject  of  the  inauguration 
of  the  Panchayat  system.  One  of  the  most  important  of  these  is  the 
regeneration  of  the  small  industries  of  the  land.  Both  in  Europe  and 
in  India  the  decline  of  small  industries  has  gone  on  paii  passu  with  the 
decline  of  farming  on  a  small  scale.  In  countries  like  France  agriculture 
has  largely  supported  village  industries,  and  small  cultivators  in  that 
country  have  turned  their  attention  to  industry  as  a  supplementary  source 
of  livelihood.  The  decline  of  village  life  in  India  is  not  only  a  political, 
but  also  an  economic  and  industrial,  problem.  Whereas,  in  Europe  the 
cultural  impulse  has  traveled  from  the  city  to  the  village,  in  India 
the  reverse  has  been  the  cast.  The  centre  of  social  life  in  this  country 
is  the  village,  and  not  the  town.  Ours  was  essentially  the  cottage  in- 
dustry, and  our  artisans  still  work  in  their  own  huts,  more  or  less  out 
of  touch  with  the  commercial  world.  Throughout  the  woi-ld  the  tend- 
ency has  been  of  late  to  lay  considerable  emphasis  on  distributive  and 
industrial  co-operation,  based  on  a  system  of  village  industries  and  en- 
terprise. Herein  would  be  found  the  origins  of  the  arts  and  crafts 
guilds  and  the  garden  cities,  the  idea  underlying  all  these  being  to 
inaugurate  a  reign  of  Socialism  and  Co-operation,  eradicating  the  en- 
tirely unequal  distribution  of  wealth  amongst  producers  and  consumers. 
India  has  always  been  a  country  of  small  tenantry,  and  has  thereby  es- 
caped many  of  the  evils  of  western  nations  have  experienced  owing  to 
the  concentration  of  wealth  in  a  few  hands.  The  communistic  sense 
in  our  midst,  and  the  fundamental  tenets  of  our  family  life  have  checked 
such  concentration  of  capital.  This  has  been  the  cause  for  the  non- 
development  of  factory  industries  on  a  large   scale. 

.41 


The  need  for  these  changes — to  which  England  is  returning, 
after  all  full  experience  of  the  miseries  of  life  in  manufacturing 
towns — is  pressing. 

Addressing  an  English  audience,  G.  K.  Gokhale  summed  up 
the  general   state  of  India  as  follows: 

Your  average  annual  income  has  been  estimated  at  about  £42  per 
hoad.  Ours,  according  to  official  estimates,  is  about  £2  per  head,  and 
according  to  non-official  estimates,  only  a  little  more  than  £]  per  head. 
Your  imports  per  head  are  about  £13 ;  ours  about  5.9.  per  head.  The 
total  deposits  in  your  Postal  Savings  Bank  amount  to  ]48  millions 
sterling,  and  you  have  in  addition  in  the  Trustees'  Savings  Banks  about 
52  million  sterling.  Our  Postal  Savings  Bank  deposits,  with  a  popula- 
tion seven  times  as  large  as  yours,  are  only  about  7  million  sterling, 
and  even  of  this  a  little  over  one-tenth  is  held  by  Europeans.  Your 
total  paid-up  capital  of  joint  stock  companies  is  about  1,900  million 
sterling.  Ours  is  not  quote  26  million  sterling  and  the  greater  part  of 
this  again  is  European.  Four-fifths  of  our  oeople  are  dependent  upon 
agriculture,  and  agriculture  has  been  for  some  time  steadily  deterio- 
rating. Indian  agriculturists  are  too  poor,  and  are.  moreover,  too  heavily 
indebted,  to  be  able  to  apply  any  capital  to  land,  and  the  result  is  that 
over  the  greater  part  of  India  agriculture  is,  as  Sir  James  Caird  pointed 
out  more  than  twenty-five  years  ago,  only  a  process  of  exhaustion  of 
the  soil.  Q^he  yield  per  acre  is  steadily  diminishing,  being  now  only 
about  eight  to  nine  bushels  an  acre  against  about  thirty  bushels  here 
in  England. 

In  all  the  matters  which  come  under  Gokhale's  first  test,  the 
Bureaucracy  has  been  and  is  inefficient. 

(f)  Give  Indians  a  Chance 
All  we  say  in  the  matter  is:  You  have  not  succeeded  in  bring- 
ing education,  health,  prosperity,  to  the  masses  of  the  people. 
Is  it  not  time  to  give  Indians  a  chance  of  doing  for  their  own 
country  work  similar  to  that  which  Japan  and  other  nations 
have  done  for  theirs?  Surely  the  claim  is  not  unreasonable. 
If  the  Anglo-Indians  say  that  the  masses  are  their  peculiar 
trust,  and  that  educated  classes  care  not  for  them  but  only  for 
place  and  power,  then  we  point  to  the  Congress,  to  the  speeches 
and  the  resolutions  eloquent  of  their  love  and  their  knowledge. 
It  is  not  their  fault  that  they  gaze  on  their  country's  poverty 
in  helpless  despair.    Or  let  Mr.  Justice  Rahim  answer: 

As  for  the  representation  of  the  interests  of  the  many  scores  of 
millions  in  India,  if  the  claim  be  that  they  are  better  represented  by 
European  officials  than  by  educated  Indian  officials  or  non-officials,  it 
is  difficult  to  conceive  how  such  a  reckless  claim  has  come  to  be  urged. 
The  inability  of  English  officials  to  master  the  spoken  languages  of 
India,  and  their  habits  of  life  and  modes  of  thought  so  completely 
divide  them  from  the  general  population,  that  only  an  extremely  lim- 
ited few,  possessed  with  extraordinary  powers  of  insight",  have  ever 
been  able  to  surmount  the  barriers.  With  the  educated  Indians,  on  the 
other  hand,  this  knowledge  is  instinctive,  and  the  view  of  religion  and 
custom,  so  strong  in  the  East,  make  their  knowledge  and  sympathy 
more  real  tl  an  is  to  be  seen  in  countries  dominated  by  materialistic 
conceptions. 

And  it  must  be  remembered  that  it  is  not  lack  of  ability  which 
has  brought  about  bureaucratic  inefficiency,  for  British  traders 

42 


anti  producers  have  done  uncommonly  well  for  themselves  in 
India.  But  a  Bureaucracy  does  not  trouble  itself  about  mat- 
ters of  this  kind;  the  Russian  Bureaucracy  did  not  concern  it- 
self with  the  happiness  of  the  Russian  masses,  but  with  their 
obedience  and  tlteir  paying  of  taxes.  Bureaucracies  are  the  same 
everywhere,  and  therefore  it  is  the  system  we  wage  war  upon, 
not  the  men;  we  do  not  want  to  substitute  Indian  bureaucrats 
for  British  bureaucrats;  we  want  to  abolish  Bureaucracy,  Gov- 
ernment by  Civil  Servants. 

(g)     The  Other  Tests  Applied 

I  need  not  delay  over  the  second,  third  and  fourth  tests,  for 
the  answers  sautent  aux  yeux. 

The  second  test,  Local  8  elf -Government:  Under  Lord  Mayo 
(1869-72)  some  attempts  were  made  at  decentralization,  called 
by  Keene  "Home  Rule,"  ( ! )  and  his  policy  was  followed,  on 
non-financial  lines,  as  well  by  Lord  Ripon,  who  tried  to  infuse 
into  what  Keene  calls  "the  germs  of  Home  Rule,"  "the  breath 
of  life."  Now  in  1917,  an»  experimental  and  limited  measure 
of  local  Home  Rule  is  to  be  tried  in  Bengal,  Though  the  report 
of  the  Decentralization  Committee  was  published  in  1909,  we 
have  not  yet  arrived  at  the  universal  election  of  non-official 
Chairmen.  Decidedly  inefficient  is  the  Bureaucracy  under  test 
two. 

The  third  test,  a  Voice  in  the  Councils:  The  part  played  by 
Indian  elected  members  in  the  Legislative  Council,  Madras,  was 
lately  described  by  a  member  as  "a  farce."  The  Supreme  Legis- 
lative Council  was  called  by  one  of  its  members  "a  glorified  De- 
bating Society."  A  table  of  resolutions  proposed  by  Indian 
elected  members,  and  passed  or  lost,  was  lately  drawn  up,  and 
justified  the  caustic  epithets.  With  regard  to  the  Minto-Morley 
reforms,  the  Bureaucracy  showed  great  efficiency  in  destroying 
the  benefits  intended  by  the  Parliamentary  Statute.  But  the 
third  test  shows  that  in  giving  Indians  a  fair  voice  in  the  Coun- 
cils the  Bureaucracy  was  inefficient. 

The  fourth  test,  the  Admission  of  Indians  to  the  Public  Serv- 
ices: This  is  shown,  by  the  report  of  the  Commission,  not  to 
need  any  destructive  activity  on  the  part  of  the  Bureaucracy  to 
prove  their  unwillingness  to  pass  it,  for  the  report  protects 
them  in  their  privileged  position. 

We  may  add  to  Gokhale's  tests  one  more,  which  will  be  tri- 
umphantly passed,  the  success  of  the  Bureaucracy  in  increasing 
the  cost  of  administration.  The  estimates  for  the  revenue  of 
the  present  year  stand  at  £86,199,600  sterling.     The  expenditure 

43 


is  reckoned  at  £85,572,100  sterling.     The  cost  of  administration 
stands  at  more  than  half  the  total  revenue: 

Civil  departments,   salaries  and  expenses £19,323,300 

Civil    miscellaneous    charges 5,283,300 

Military  service  23,165,900 

£47,772,500 

The  reduction  of  the  abnormal  cost  of  Government  in  India 
Is  of  the  most  pressing  nature,  but  this  will  never  be  done  until 
we  win  Home  Rule. 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  Secondary  Reasons  for  the  demand 
for  Home  Rule  are  of  the  weightiest  nature  in  themselves,  and 
show  the  necessity  for  its  grant  if  India  is  to  escape  from  a 
poverty  which  threatens  to  lead  to  national  bankruptcy,  as  it 
has  already  led  to  a  short  life-period  and  a  high  death  rate,  to 
wide-spread  disease,  and  to  a  growing  exhaustion  of  the  soil. 
That  some  radical  change  must  be  brought  about  in  the  condi- 
tion of  our  masses  if  a  Revolution  of  Hunger  is  to  be  averted, 
is  patent  to  all  students  of  history,  who  also  know  the  poverty 
of  the  Indian  masses  today.  This .  economic  condition  is  due 
to  many  causes,  of  which  the  inevitable  lack  of  understanding 
by  an  alien  Government  is  only  one,  A  system  of  Government 
suitable  to  the  West  was  forced  on  the  East,  destroying  its 
own  democratic  and  communal  institutions,  and  imposing  bureau- 
cratic methods  which  bewildered  and  deteriorated  a  people  to 
whom  they  were  strange  and  repellant.  The  result  is  not  a 
matter  for  recrimination,  but  for  change.  An  inappropriate  sys- 
tem, forced  on  an  already  highly  civilized  people  was  bound  to 
fail.  It  has  been  rightly  said  that  the  poor  only  revolt,  when 
the  misery  they  are  enduring  is  greater  than  the  danger  of  re- 
volt. We  need  Home  Rule  to  stop  the  daily  suffering  of  our 
millions  from  the  diminishing  yield  of  the  soil  and  the  decay 
of  village  industries. 

Administrative  Reforms 
These  fall  under  the  heads  of: 

1.  Reforms  in  the  Government  of  India. 

2.  Reforms  in  the  Governments  of  Provinces. 

3.  Reforms  in  Local  Self-Government. 

I  prefer  to  take  these  in  reverse  order,  building  up  the  scheme 
of  Government  from  its  foundation,  so  that  it  may  appear  as  a 
coherent  whole,  its  parts  interdependent.  But  I  will  say  at  the 
outset  to  preclude  mistake,  that  no  scheme  of  Local  Self-Gov- 
ernment can  succeed  unless  the  changes  asked  for  last  year 
in  the  Congress-League  Scheme  are  granted.  That  scheme  is 
our  irreducible  minimum  for  reforms  worthy  of  the  name.  The 
long  and  futile  tinkering  at  Local  Self-Government  since  the 
days  of  Lord  Ripon  has  conclusively  proved   that  you   can  no 

44 


more  have  reality  of  Local  Self-Government  with  unrepresent- 
ative Provincial  Legislative  Councils,  or  with  such  Councils  as 
we  have  now — save  in  Bengal — with  an  official  and  nominated 
majority  of  members,  with  a  complete  British  Executive,  or 
a  four  to  one  British  majority  Executive,  in  which  the  solitary 
Indian  member  lends  cover  to  objectionable  measures  which 
he  is  powerless  to  prevent,  than  you  could  have  a  healthy  body 
with  a  diseased  or  undeveloped  brain.  Healthy  brain,  directing 
and  controlling,  must  go  with  a  healthy  body.  A  foreign  Ex- 
ecutive distrustful  of  Indian  capacity  to  govern,  busies  itself 
more  with  official  check  and  controls  than  with  the  powers  of 
the  local  membership.  We  are  tired  of  this  grand  motherly 
legislation.  If  the  Anglo-Indians  think  us  babies — very  well — 
let  the  babies  crawl  by  themselves,  get  up  and  try  to  walk  and 
then  tumble  down  until  by  tumbles  they  learn  equilibrium.  If 
they  learn  to  walk  in  leading  strings  they  will  always  develop 
bowlegs.  But  let  me  remark  in  passing,  that  wherever  the  In- 
dians have  been  tried  fairly,  they  have  always  succeeded.  If 
the  Governments  of  India  and  Great  Britain,  under  official  pres- 
sure, begin  with  local  Self-Government,  and  demand  success 
in  that  department — or  in  any  departments,  before  they  agree 
to  the  Congress  League  Scheme,  at  least — it  means  that  they 
are  marking  time  and  are  not  making  any  real  step  forward. 
And  let  me  say  to  the  Governments  of  India  and  Britain,  with 
all  frankness  and  good  will,  that  India  is  demanding  her  rights, 
and  is  not  begging  for  concessions.  It  is  for  her  to  say  with 
what  she  will  be  satisfied — I  appeal  to  the  statement  of  the 
Premier  of  Great  Britain  on  support  of  my  assertion — and  not 
for  any  other  authority  to  say  to  her:  "Thus  far,  and  no  fur- 
ther." In  this  attitude  the  Democracy  of  Great  Britain  sup- 
ports us;  the  Allies,  fighting,  as  Mr.  Asquith  said,  "for  nothing 
short  of  freedom,"  support  us;  the  great  Republic  of  the  United 
States  of  America  supports  us.  Britain  cannot  deny  her  own 
traditions,  contradict  her  own  leading  statesmen,  and  shame 
the  free  Commonwealth  of  which  she  is  the  glorious  Head,  to 
the  face  of  the  world.  » 

Unfit  for  Democracy? 
We  have  been  assured  time  after  time,  even  to  weariness, 
that  India  is  totally  unfit  for  Democratic  institutions,  having 
always  lived  under  absolute  rule  of  sorts.  But  that  is  not  the 
opinion  of  historians,  based  on  facts,  though  it  may  be  the 
opinion  of  the  Indian  Civil  Service,  based  on  prejudices.  As 
well  said  in  the  address  presented  to  H.  E.  the  Viceroy  and 
the  Rt.  Hon.  Mr.  Montagu  by  the  Home  Rule  Leagues: 

The  argument  that  democracy  is  foreign  to  India  cannot  be  alleged 
by  any  well-informed  person.  Maine  and  other  historians  recognize  the 
fact  that  Democratic  Institutions  are  essentially  Aryan,  and  spread 
from    India    to    Europe    with    the    immigration    of    Aryan    peoples ;    Pan- 

45 


chayats,  the  "village  republics,"  had  been  the  most  stable  institution 
of  India,  and  only  vanished  during  the  last  century  under  the  pressure 
of  the  East  India  Company's  domination.  They  still  exist  within  the 
castes,  each  caste  forming  within  itself  a  thorough  democracy,  in  which 
the  same  man  may  have  as  relations  a  prince  and  a  peasant.  Social 
rank  does  not  depend  so  much  on  wealth  and  title,  as  on  learning  and 
occupation.  India  is  democratic  in  spirit,  and  in  institutions  left  to 
her  from  the  past  and  under  her  control  in  the   present. 

We   have  further  the  testimony  of  eminent  Englishmen. 

Sir  John  Lawrence  said  as  long  ago  as  1864: 

The  people  of  India  are  quite  capable  of  administering  their  own 
affairs,  and  the  municipal  feeling  is  deeply  rooted  in  them.  The  village 
communities,  each  of  which  is  a  little  republic,  are  the  most  abiding 
of  Indian  institutions.  Holding  the  position  we  do  in  India,  every 
view  of  duty  and  policy  should  induce  us  to  leave  as  much  as  possible 
of   the   business   of   the   country   to   be   done   by   the   people. 

Sir  Bartle  Frere,  in  1871,  wrote: 

Any  one  who  has  watched  the  working  of  Indian  society  will  see  that 
its  genius  is  one  to  represent,  not  merely  by  election  under  Reform  Acts, 
but  represent  generally  by  provisions,  every  class  of  the  community,  and 
when  there  is  any  difficulty  respecting  any  matter  to  be  laid  before 
Government,  it  should  be  discussed  among  themselves.  When  there  is 
any  fellow-citizen  to  be  rewarded  or  punished,  there  is  always  a  caste 
meeting  and  this  is  an  expression,  it  seems  to  me,  of  the  genius  of  the 
people,  as  it  was  of  the  old  Saxons,  to  gather  together  in  assemblies 
of  different  types  to   vote  by  tribes  or  hundreds. 

As  Mr.  Chisholm  Austey  said: 

We  are  apt  to  forgot  in  this  count^-y.  when  we  talk  of  preparing  peo- 
ple in  the  East  by  education,  and  all  that  sort  of  thing,  foi;  Municipal 
Government  and  Parliamentary  Government  (if  I  may  use  such  a  term), 
that  the  East  is  the  parent  of  Municipalities.  Local  Self-Government,  in 
the  widest  acceptation  of  the  term,  is  as  old  as  the  East  itself.  No 
matter  what  may  be  the  religion  of  the  people  who  inhabit  what  we 
call  the  East,  there  is  not  a  portion  of  the  country  from  west  to  east, 
from  north  to  south,  which  is  not  swarming  with  municipalities,  and 
not  only  so,  but  like  to  our  municipalities  of  old,  they  are  all  bound 
together  as  in  a  species  of  network,  so  that  you  have  ready-made  to 
your  hand   the  framework  of  a  great  system   of   representation. 

I  might  multiply  these  quotations,  but  to  what  end?  The 
wise  know  them;  the  other-wise  will  not  accept  them,  pipe  we 
never  so  forcefully. 

IVith  these   prefactory  remarks,   I   proceed   to  consider  the 

Reforms  in  Local  Self-government 

(a)     General  Principles 

We  have  three  extending  areas  to  consider:  (1)  The  Village; 
(2)  the  Group  of  Villages,  each  separated  from  others  by  larger 
or  smaller  spaces  of  land;  this  group  plus  the  intervening  lands 
forms  the  second  area  of  control;  (3)  the  District,  consisting 
of  conterminous  Taluqs  or  Tahsils,  for  the  most  part,  but  also 
of  tracts  of  waste  and  forest  lands,  owned  by  the  Government. 

There  is  an  interesting  reminiscence  in  this  sort  of  group- 
ing; there  was  a  headman  over  a  village;  a  higher  grade 
of  headman  over  a  group  of  ten  villages;  a  higher  yet  over  one 

46 


hundred  villages,  and  so  on  in  multiples  of  ten.  The  ancients 
liked  this  regular  ascending  scale;  they  liked  to  see  orderly 
theories. 

In  the  village,  the  electorate  should  be  its  resident  house- 
holders, whether  owners  or  occupiers,  "that  that  which  concerns 
all  may  be  judged  by  all."  This  gives  to  the  man  or  woman 
resident  a  voice  in  the  country,  but  the  direct  power  is  limited 
to  electing  representatives  to  deal  with  the  questions  immedi- 
ately affecting  the  voter,  while  indirectly  he  reaches  up  through 
the  higher  grades  to  the  governing  of  the  whole  country.  Later, 
as  education  and  experience  spread,  universal  suffrage  will  elect 
our  Legislative  Councils,  supreme  and  local.  We  take  a  leaf 
from  England's  book,  and  do  not  at  first  give  the  direct  suf- 
frage to  the  laborers  except  for  the  local  Council.  We  make 
the  electorate  for  the  Provincial  Legislative  Council  conterm- 
inous with  the  electorate  of  Taluq  Boards. 

We  then  distribute  duties  and  powers  on  the  principle  that 
whatever  belongs  to  the  village  exclusively  should  be  controlled 
by  the  Village  Council,  while  where  a  village  institution  is  a 
fragment  of  a  larger  whole,  the  whole  should  be  planned  by 
the  Council  in  the  area  of  whose  authority  the  whole  exists, 
and  the  village  fragment  be  assigned  to  it  by  the  higher  Coun- 
cil, to  whom  the  Village  Council  should  be  responsible  for  its 
management  of  its  own  fragment.  Let  us  take  a  school  as  illus- 
tration, and  suppose  that  the  educational  scheme  for  the  Prov- 
ince should  be  planned  out  by  the  Education  Department  of  the 
Provincial  Government,  and  sanctioned  by  the  Provincial  Coun- 
cil; it  would  include  Provincial  University  or  Universities,  Col- 
leges, High  Schools,  Secondary  Schools,  Primary  Schools,  each 
with  its  manual  training  institute  of  similar  grade  attached  to 
it,  and  these  having  divisions  for  general  manual  training,  and 
the  closer  instruction  of  the  workshops  for  those  learning  a 
trade  as  a  means  of  livelihood.  Every  village  would  have  its 
Elementary  School,  with  the  workshops  needed  in  that  partic- 
ular village  for  the  trades  practiced  therein;  probably  there 
would  be  a  Secondary  School  in  every  Firka  (Revenue  Circle) ; 
at  least  one  High  School  in  every  Taluq,  and  in  most  Taluqs 
more  than  one;  a  College,  or  more,  in  each  District;  one  or 
more  Universities  for  the  Province.  But  the  Village  Panchayat 
would  be  responsible  only  for  its  own  Elementary  School,  and 
for  seeing  that  any  promising  boy  or  girl  should  be  sent  on  to 
the  Firka  Secondary  School.  By  this  the  School  would  be  linked 
on  to  the  larger  life  beyond  the  village,  but  its  own  control 
would  be  only  over  its  own  School,  seeing  that  its  share  of  the 
Provincial  Education  was  carried  out. 

(t)     The  Panchayat 
The   existence    of   Village    Communities    in    India   from    time 
Immemorial,    with    a    considerable    amount    of    organization,    is 

47 


a  matter  of  common  knowledge,  and  in  some  parts  of  the  coun- 
try many  inscriptions  and  records  have  been  discovered  which 
enable  us  to  reconstruct  the  village  life  which  continued  in  the 
south  of  India  to  the  last  century,  and  in  Burma  to  our  own 
time.  It  received  its  death  blow  by  Sir  Thomas  Munro's  indi- 
vidualistic raiyatwari  scheme,  and  has  been  losing  vitality  since 
1820.  Mr.  C.  P.  Ramaswami  Aiyar,  in  the  pamphlet  before 
quoted,  remarks: 

In  Kautilya's  Arthashastra,  Book  III,  Vol.  10,  villages  are  contem- 
plated as  constructing  and  maintaining  in  their  corporate  capaciy  works 
of  public  utility  :  and  Professor  Rhys  Davids  says :  "Villagers  are  de- 
scribed in  the  Buddhist  books  as  uniting  all  their  care  to  build  mohallas 
and  rest-houses,  to  mend  the  roads  between  their  own  and  adjacent 
vilLages,  and  even  to  lay  out  parks."  {Vide  P.  Bannerji's  Public  Admin- 
istration in  Ancient  India,  p.  293,  note  2.)  In  Mysore,  now  in  manys 
districts,  the  villagers  give  half  a  day's  work  free,  per  week,  for  works 
of  public  utility,  and  the  aggregate  value  ot  the  work  done  is  astound- 
ing. Every  village  in  the  times  of  the  Arthashastra  (4th  century,  B. 
C,  formed  an  integral  part  of  the  general  administrative  system  and 
the  village  was  the  foundation  of  the  governmental  edifice.  The  village 
Government  of  those  days  partook  not  oaly  of  the  adminisrration  of 
executive,  but  also  of  judiciary  functions,  as  will  appear  from  the 
Ceylon  inscriptions  dealing  with  the  administration  of  criminal  justice 
of  communal  courts.  To  the  credit  of  the  Madras  Government  it  must 
be  said  that,  as  against  Sir  T.  Munro,  who  was  a  thorough  individ- 
ualist, the  Madras  Board  of  Revenue  desired  in  the  early  years  of  the 
last  century  to  leave  the  authority  of  the  village  institutions  unimpaired. 
But  Sir  Thomas  Munro  had  his  way,  and  the  village  communities  lost 
theii    vitality. 

The  last  Administration  Report  of  Mysore  (1915-16),  says  (p. 
278)  on  "The  Village  Improvement  Scheme,"  that  "the  villagers 
contributed  Rs.  47,083  either  in  cash  or  in  labor"  during  the 
year,  the  Government  helping  with  grants  amounting  to  Rs. 
44,978.     It  says: 

The  village  committee  continued  to  evince  much  interest  in  this  work, 
and  many  works  of  public  utility,  such  as  construction  of  school  build- 
ings, sinking  wells  and  opening  roads,  clearing  lantana  and  planting 
trees,   were  carried  out  through  its  associations  throughout  the  State. 

Conferences  of  the  village  committees  were  held  in  four 
districts,  "to  take  stock  of  the  work  done  by  the  committees, 
to  discuss  the  needs  and  requirements  of  the  rural  population, 
and  to  concert  measures  and  draw  up  programmes  of  improving 
the  economic  and  sanitary  condition  of  the  villages."  The  vil- 
lagers fall  in  gladly  with  this  communal  work,  which  is  on 
their  traditional  lines,  giving  definite  amounts  of  free  labor,  as 
stated  above,  to  the  improvement  of  their  village.  The  old 
sense  of  communal  obligation  still  survives,  and  the  Mysore 
Government  has  wisely  utilized  and  fostered  it. 

The  characteristics  of  the  village  were  a  group  of  houses  sur- 
rounded by  a  large  tract  of  land,  arable  and  pasture;  each 
resident  had  a  site  free  of  rent  for  house,  yard  and  garden. 
The  establishment  consisted  of  the  officers  and  craftsmen,  whose 

48 


services  were  free  to  all,  and  who  were  given  land,  and  various 
other  rights  to  shares  of  produce,  as  remuneration.  They  con- 
sisted of  a  headman,  an  accountant,  a  watchman  who  also  dis- 
charged some  police  functions,  a  boundaryman,  a  superintendent 
of  tanks  and  water  courses,  a  pujari,  a  school  master,  an  as- 
trologer, a  doctor,  a  musician,  a  poet,  a  dancing  girl,  a  barber, 
a  washerman,  a  cowkeeper,  a  potter,  a  smith  and  a  carpenter. 
The  village  assembly  governed,  elected  by  "portickets,"  and 
formed  committees  for  branches  of  work;  the  land  was  com- 
munal property  and  co-distributed  from  time  to  time.  All  house- 
holders appear  to  have  had  votes,  but  certain  qualifications  were 
laid  down  for  eligibility  for  election  as  a  Pancha  (Councillor), 

In  the  report  of  the  Decentralization  Committee  appointed  in 
1907  by  Edward  VII— composed  of  five  Englishmen  and  one  In- 
dian, Romesh  Chandra  Dutt — Part  III,  Chapter  XVIII,  iii,  section 
694,  read: 

Throughout  the  greater  part  of  India  the  village  constitutes  the  pri- 
mary territorial  unit  of  Government  organization,  and  from  the  vil- 
lages are  built  up  larger  administrative  entities. 

The  village  is  described  from  the  Gazetteer  as  above  from 
older  sources,  with  its  "customary  titles  and  its  little  staff  of 
functionaries,  artisans  and  traders."  These  villages,  says  the 
report,  "formerly  possessed  a  large  degree  of  local  autonomy," 
but— 

This  autonomy  has  now  disappeared  owing  to  the  establishment  of 
local  Civil  and  Criminal  Courts,  the  present  revenue  and  police  organi- 
zation, the  increase  of  communication,  the  growth  of  individualism, 
and  the  operation  of  the  individual  raiyatwari  system  which  is  ex- 
tending even  in  the  north  of  India.  Nevertheless,  the  village  remains 
the  first  unit  of  administration,  the  principal  village  functionaries — the 
headman,  the  accountant  and  the  village  watchman — are  largely  utilized 
and  paid  by  Government,  and  there  is  still  a  certain  amount  of  com- 
mon  village  feeling   and  interest. 

"Paid  by  Government," — those  three  words  explain  the  killing 
of  the  old  village  system.  The  ofiicials  became  the  servants  of 
a  higher  official — Sub-Tahsildar,  Tahsildar,  Deputy  Collector  or 
Collector — looking  to  him  for  favor  and  reward,  not  to  the  vil- 
lagers. Thus  they  became  village  tyrants  instead  of  village 
servants,  and  the  Soul  of  the  Village,  the  responsibility  to  one's 
brother  villagers,  died. 

It  Is  admitted  that  the  village  communities  have  disintegrated 
under  British  administration,  but  the  report  urges  their  re-estab- 
lishment. It  seems  that  some  witness  doubted  "whether  the 
people  are  sufficiently  advanced  in  education  and  independence 
for  any  measure  of  village  autonomy";  there  speaks  the  spirit 
of  the  bureaucrat.  The  villages  had  been  autonomous  for  thou- 
sands of  years;  invasions,  changes  of  rule,  lapse  of  time,  had 
left  them  active;  a  century  and  a  half  of  British  rule  had  made 
them  unfit,  in  this  witness'  mind,  to  manage  their  own  affairs. 

49 


Why  this  strange  deterioration  under  a  rule  supposed  to  be 
uplifting?  Because,  on  the  Procrustes-bed  of  Bureaucracy,  all 
that  did  not  fit  it  had  to  be  chopped  off;  the  villagers  had  their 
own  ways,  which  had  served  them  well,  but  they  were  not  the 
Collector's  ways,  so  they  were  bad.  Only  Home  Rule  will  rein- 
tegrate Village  Government. 

However,  the  report  desires  the  development  of  a  Panchayat 
system,  and  says  (s  736) : 

We  consider  that  as  Local  Self-Government  should  commence  in  the 
village  with  the  establishment  of  Village  Panchayats,  so  the  next  step 
should  be  the  constitution  of  boards  for  areas  of  smaller  size  than  a 
district.  We  desire,  therefore,  to  see  sub-district  boards  universally 
established  as  the  principal  agencies  of  rural  board  associations. 

Unhappily  it  adds  to  its  recommendation  a  condition  which, 
however  well  meant,  would  ensure  its  being  still  born  as  a  dead 
failure,  for  it  is  essential,  says  the  report,  that  the  Panchayat 
movement. 

Should  bo  completely  under  the  eyo  and  hand  of  the  district  authori- 
ties. Supervision  of  affairs  in  the  villages  is,  and  should  remain,  one 
of  the  main  functions  of  Tahsildars  and  Sub-Divisional  Officers. 

Tie  up  a  baby's  arms  and  legs  and  then  leave  it  to  teach  itself 
to  walk.  If  it  does  not  succeed,  blame  the  baby.  The  free  baby 
will  learn  equilibrium  through  tumbles;  the  tied-up  baby  will 
become  paralyzed  and  will  never  walk. 

I  hope  that  our  Secretary  of  State  will  establish  Panchayats 
by  an  act  based  on  the  admirable  one  drawn  up  by  the  Hon. 
Mr.  T.  Rangachariar,  that  he  tried  vainly  to  introduce  in  the 
Madras  Legislative  Council.  I  have  handed  it  to  him  with  Mr. 
Rangachariar's  careful  and  weighty  monograph,  and  it  may 
be  that  the  rejected  of  Madras  may  be  the  accepted  of  West- 
minster.    The  Act  will  be  found  as  Appendix  III. 

I  may  quote  here,  on  the  establishment  of  Panchayats,  what 
I  have  said  elsewhere: 

Village  needs  would  thus  be  made  known,  and,  if  necessary, 
they  could  be  represented  by  the  Panchayat  to  a  higher  au- 
thority. The  village  would  become  articulate  through  its  Pan- 
chayat, and  would  no  longer  be  the  dumb  and  often  driven 
creature  which  it  is  today.  And  it  would  be  brought  into  touch 
with  the  larger  life.  The  Panchayat  might  invite  lecturers,  or- 
ganize discussions,  arrange  amusements,  games,  etc.  All  vil- 
lage life  would  be  lifted  to  a  higher  level,  widened  and  enriched 
by  such  organization,  and  each  village,  further,  forming  one  of 
a  group  of  villages,  would  realize  its  unity  with  others,  and 
thus  become   an   organ   of  the   larger  corporate   life. 

The  corresponding  unit  in  the  Towns  to  the  Village  in  the 
country  is  the  Ward,  and  the  Ward  Panchayat,  like  the  Village 
one,  should  be  elected  by  Household  Suffrage.  All  towns  with 
populations  over  5,000  should  have  Ward  Panchayats  under 
control  of  the  Municipality.    Below  that  population  a  Ward  Pan- 

60 


cha3^t  would  be  the  only  municipal  authority.  These  Ward 
Councils  should  take  up  the  smaller  town  matters,  now  neg- 
lected, because  the  Municipality  is  too  heavily  burdened  to  at- 
tend to  them  properly.  The  Elementary  Schools  in  each  Ward 
should  be  in  its  charge;  scavenging  and  sanitation  generally, 
and  care  for  the  cleanliness  of  the  streets  and  latrines;  provision 
and  superintendence  of  stands  for  hire  vehicles  and  resting 
carts,  with  water  troughs  for  horses  and  cattle;  the  inspection 
of  foodstuffs  and  prevention  of  adulteration;  arbitration  in  small 
disputes  as  in  Prance — where  so  much  litigation  is  prevented 
by  the  appointment  of  a  small  tradesman  as  a  local  judge — 
inspection  of  workshops,  wells,  etc. — all  these  matters  would 
naturally  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  Ward  Councils.  Where 
there  is  a  Municipality,  that  body  would  delegate  to  the  Ward 
Council  such  matters  as  it  thought  fit. 

The  Taluq  or  Tahsil  Board 

The  next  rung  in  the  ladder  of  Local  Self-Government  will  be 
the  body  intermediate  between  the  Panchayat  and  the  District 
Board;  the  name  will  vary  in  different  Provinces.  With  us  in 
Madras,  the  Presidency  is  divided  into  26  Districts  and  these 
into  96  Taluqs;  for  general  purposes  there  may,  if  preferred, 
be  termed  Sub-Districts,  the  name  used  in  the  Decentralization 
Commission  Report.  But  the  Taluq,  or  its  corresponding  di- 
vision outside  Madras,  should  be  the  area  controlled  by  the 
Board.  The  report  calls  them  Sub-District  Boards,  but  itself 
suggests  the  better  name  of  Taluq  or  Tahsil,  taking  these  defi- 
nite areas,  already  existing,  as  the  area  of  control  for  the  Boards 
intermediate  between  Panchayats  and  District  Board.  In  each 
of  these  there  should  be  a  Board,  its  electorate  consisting  of  the 
Panchayats  in  its  area,  and  of  all  persons  now  qualified  to  vote 
in  Firkas;  the  qualification  is  only  a  property  one  and  may  be 
amended  later.  The  Panchas  would  thus  have  a  second  vote, 
earned  by  public  service,  and  would  have  their  special  repre- 
sentatives on  the  Taluq  Board,  each  representing  his  own  vil- 
lage's common  interests.  The  Decentralization  Report  strongly 
urges  that  these  Boards  should  form  an  essential  part  of  the 
scheme  of  Local  Self-Government,  with  adequate  resources  and 
a  large  measure  of  independence. 

Their  functions  should  include  control  of  Secondary  and  High 
Schools,  with  Model  Farms  in  rural,  and  Technical  Institutes 
in  urban,  areas.  Inter-village  roads  and  their  lighting,  where 
necessary,  water-ways  and  irrigation  channels  outside  villages, 
but  within  the  Taluq,  should  be  under  their  care.  They  should 
form  Co-operative  Societies,  and  where  these  are  not  estab- 
lished, they  should  hold  agricultural  machinery  for  hiring  to 
villagers,  establish  granaries  for  storage  of  grain,  dairy  farms, 
with   stud  bulls  to  be  hired   to  villagers,   breeding   stables   of 

51 


horses,  and  generally  they  should  organize  industry  wherever 
Co-operative   Societies   are  -not   available. 

(d)     District  Boards 

Some  of  our  political  reforms  would  abolish  District  Boards. 
As  at  present  advised,  I  prefer  to  keep  them. 

This  third  grade  upwards  of  Local  Self-Government  consists 
of  the  District  Boards  in  the  country  and  Municipalities  in  the 
larger  towns.  The  electorate  of  the  District  Board  should  be 
the  Taluq  Boards  under  its  jurisdiction,  and  the  general  Taluq 
electorate.  This  gives  every  Taluq  Board  members  a  second 
vote,  as  in  the  case  of  Panchas,  deserved  by  public  work. 

Their  functions  would  be  to  discharge  all  the  duties  which 
affect  the  District  as  a  whole,  to  supervise  the  Taluq  Boards, 
and  to  decide  any  appeals  by  Panchayats  from  a  Taluq  Board 
decision.  They  would  assign  the  proportion  of  local  taxation  to 
be  raised  by  each  Taluq,  and  the  grants  to  be  made  to  each 
from  the  grant  received  from  the  Provincial  Council  for  the 
District.  They  would  appoint  the  necessary  District  Officers, 
such  as  Engineer  for  the  District  Public  Works  Department, 
the  Inspector  of  Secondary  and  High  Schools  in  the  Taluqs, 
the  Sanitary  Inspector,  etc.  Public  roads,  local  railways  and 
water  ways  would  be  under  their  inspection.  The  District  Town 
would  include  the  usual  District  buildings,  and*  the  District  Col- 
leges for  Arts,  Science,  Agriculture,   Industries,   Crafts. 

Even  in  Lord  Ripon's  time  there  was  a  feeble  organization 
making  for  Self-Government.     Keene  remarks: 

The  germ  of  Home  Rule  already  existed,  not  only  in  the  traditional 
institutions  of  the  rural  communes  so  often  described,  but  in  towns  and 
cities  where — in  whatever  leading  strings — local  bodies  regulated  the 
conservancy   and   the   watch-and-ward  of  the   streets. 

Slow  as  progress  has  been,  yet  some  progress  has  been  made, 
and  when  these  Boards  are  wholly  elective,  have  elected  chair- 
men, and  real  power  over  their  own  areas,  the  progress  will  be 
rapid.  When  Local  Self-Government  is  established  as  an  es- 
sential part  of  Home  Rule,  we  shall  see  the  Village  Panchayat 
abolishing  such  degrading  punishments  as  the  stocks  and  flog- 
ging, and  the  villagers  will  be  treated  as  free  men,  worthy  of 
respect.  Moreover,  agriculture  will  be  taught  at  convenient  cen- 
ters, and  model  farms  will  be  established  both  for  training  and 
experiment.  Mysore  has  three  such  farms.  The  raiyats  will  be 
helped  to  improved  methods  of  cultivation,  suitable  manures, 
and  clean  seed  of  the  best  kinds.  The  Forest  Laws  will  be  mod- 
ified and  the  ancient  fashion  of  rings  of  grazing  ground  will  be 
provided  for  their  cattle.  In  Mysore,  "the  major  portions  of  the 
forests  were  thrown  open,"  says  the  last  report,  "for  the  grazing 
of  cattle  of  all  descriptions,  except  goats."  Panchayats  will 
supervise  village   schools  suitable  to  the   circumstances  of  the 

52 


village,  and  training  for  adult  raiyats  willing  to  learn,  while 
Taluq  Boards  will,  as  suggested,  arrange  for  the  provision  of 
stud  bulls,  grain  storage,  agricultural  machinery,  etc.,  at  reason- 
able terms  for  hire.  Boys  of  bright  intelligence  will  have  the 
opportunity,  through  scholarships,  of  rising  through  Schools  to 
College,  or  of  good  agricultural  or  industrial  or  craft  training. 
These  things  are  not  dreams,  but  things  done  in  other  civilized 
countries,  where  the  people  have  Home  Rule.  In  the  Educa- 
tional Rescript  of  the  Emperor  of  Japan,  published  in  1872,  he 
directed  that  "henceforth  Education  shall  be  so  diffused  that 
there  may  not  be  a  village  with  an  ignorant  family,  nor  a  fam- 
ily with  an  ignorant  member."  Twenty-four  years  later,  as  we 
have  seen,  92  per  cent  of  the  Japanese  children  of  school-going 
age  were  in  school.  Why  should  not  Indians  do  as  well  as 
Japanese,  when  here  also  education  is  controlled  by  men  of 
their  own  race?  For  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  educated 
class  is  rooted  in  their  ancestral  villages,  and  many  relatives 
of  Vakils  are  Raiyats.  Despite  the  caste  system,  there  is  much 
more  blending  of  classes  here  than  in  the  West,  and  the  village 
and  town  populations  are  closely  inter-related.  The  bright  boy 
of  a  Raiyat's  family  becomes  a  Vakil,  while  the  duller  remains 
a  Raiyat.  This  keen  sympathy  has  been  shown  in  the  earnest 
but  futile  resolutions  of  the  Congress  from  its  second  session 
onwards,  and  when  we  have  Home  Rule  the  resolutions  will 
become  operative. 

(e)     Local  Government  Board 

The  Local  Government  system  must  have  at  its  head  a  Local 
Government  Board,  and  its  functions  must  be  defined  by  an  Act 
of  the  Provincial  Legislative  Council,  on  the  lines  of  the  Local 
Government  Board  Act  of  1871,  and  the  subsequent  cognate 
enactments,  as  proposed  in  the  address  of  the  Home  Rule 
Leagues  presented  last  month  in  Delhi.  The  remarks  of  the 
Royal  Sanitary  Commission  in  England  in  1879  are  very  apposite 
here,  though  naturally  spoken  there,  under  the  circumstances, 
of  the  need  of  a  central  sanitary  officer: 

One  recognized  and  sufficiently  powerful  Minister,  not  to  centralize 
administration,  but,  on  tiie  contrary,  to  set  local  life  in  motion — a 
real  motive  power,  and  an  authority  to  be  referred  to  for  assistance 
and  guidance  by  all  the  sanitary  authorities  for  local  Government 
throughout  the   country. 

The  Commissioners  go  on  to  describe  the  difliculties  besetting 
Local  Government  in  England,  in  words  which  recall  the  de- 
spairing remarks  of  our  Municipal  President  in  Madras : 

Great  is  the  vis  inertiae  to  be  overcome ;  the  repugnance  to  self- 
taxation  ;  the  practical  distrust  of  science ;  and  the  number  of  persons 
interested  in  offending  against  sanitary  laws,  even  amongst  those  who 
must    constitute    chiefly    the   local    authorities   to    enforce   them. 

53 


These  difficulties  are  alleged  by  Englishmen  in  India  as  rea- 
sons for  withholding  complete  local  Self-Government,  and  for 
making  timid  experiments  that  may  continue  for  centuries. 
Englishmen  in  England,  face  to  face  with  similar  difficulties, 
find  in  them  only  reasons  for  setting  "local  life  in  motion." 

The  object  of  the  English  Act  was 

To  concentrate  in  one  department  of  the  Government  the  supervision 
of  the  laws  relating  to  public  health,  the  relief  of  the  poor,  and  local 
Government. 

The  Board  is  composed  of  unpaid  members  who  do  noth 
ing — the  Lord  President  of  the  Council,  all  the  Secretaries  of 
State,  the  Lord  Privy  Seal  and  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer 
— a  most  august  and  reverend  body.  All  the  Board  is  empowered 
to  do  can  be  done,  and  is  so  done,  by  the  President  of  the 
Board,  who  sits  in  Parliament  and  is  generally  a  Cabinet  Minister, 
and  has  a  salary  of  £2,600  a  year.  He  has  a  Permanent  Sec 
retary  with  five  assistants,  a  Legal  Adviser,  a  Chief  Engineer 
ing  Inspector,  a  Chief  Medical  Officer,  with  a  staff  of  medical 
inspectors,  architects  and  engineers,  with  the  "ordinary  staff 
of  a  Government  Office".  If,  under  our  scheme  of  the  Executive 
Council  ,an  Indian  member  was  the  President  of  the  Local  Gov- 
ernment, omitting  the  ornamental  Board,  it  might  suffice. 

The  "growth  of  the  Functions  of  the  Board"  is  indicated 
by  its  absorption  of  the  duties  of  the  Poor  Law  Commissioners 
and  Poor  Law  Boards  by  41  Acts  of  Parliament  between  1835 
and  1870,  and  by  154  Acts  between  1871  and  1907,  both  inclusive. 
The  legal  authority  states  that  the  lists  are  probably  "not  ex- 
austlve."  They  suffice.  On  Regulations,  Orders,  Bye  Laws, 
et  hoc  genus  omne,  I  do  not  dare  to  enter.  The  President  of 
our  Board,  when  appointed,  may  study  them. 

Pbovincial  Legislative   Council  and   Supbeme  Legislative 
Council 

The  Scheme  of  the  National  Congress  and  the  All  India  Muslim 
League  has  been  before  the  country  for  a  year,  and  has  been 
presented  to  the  Viceroy  and  the  Secretary  of  State  for  India. 
It  is  printed  as  Appendix  IV.  I  do  not  discuss  it  here,  as  it 
has  been  fully  discussed,  from  all  points  of  view,  during  the 
past  two  years.  We  have  all  worked  for  it,  honestly  and  zeal- 
ously, confining  ourselves  within  its  four  corners.  We  have 
now  to  remember  that  we  have  the  duty  of  helping  the  country 
to  work  under  it  during  the  transitional  period  for  which  it 
was  designed — differing  in  this  from  the  Memorandum  of  the 
Nineteen,  which  was  suggested  as  containing  Post  War  Reforms. 
The  Congress  League  scheme  was,  professedly,  a  bridge,  leading 

54 


from  the  present  condition  to  that  considered  in  the  third  part 
of  last  year's  Congress  Resolution: 

That,  In  the  Reconstruction  of  the  Empire,  India  shall  be  lifted 
from  the  position  of  a  Dependency  to  that  of  an  equal  partner  in  the 
Empire   with   the   Self-Governing  Dominions. 

That  now  becomes  our  Objective.  We  must  continue  to 
agitate  for  the  Congress  Scheme  until  it  is  passed.  The  final 
scheme  will,  of  course,  include  the  place  of  the  Indian  States 
under  completed  Self-Government,  and  of  the  representation  of 
India  in  the  Central  Imperial  Council,  or  Parliament,  or  Cabinet 
— questions  which  were  deliberately  left  out  of  our  transitional 
scheme. 

On  the  general  question  of  the  work  of  the  Provisional  Legis- 
lative Councils,  I  may  perhaps  say  that  it  will  be  their  duty  to 
make  grants  to  District  Boards  which,  in  turn,  will  distribute 
them  to  the  Taluq  and  Village  Boards  in  their  area.  No  inter- 
ference with  their  use  of  grants  should  be  made,  save  where 
palpable  irregularities  justify  the  interference  of  the  Local  Gov- 
ernment. Precedent,  Freedom  to  work  and  to  blunder — to  a 
non-ruinous  extent — must  be  allowed  if  Local  Self-Government 
is  to  become  a  reality. 

Another  large  portion  of  their  work  will  be  the  fostering  of 
industries  in  their  Provinces,  and  the  helping  of  the  District 
Boards  by  experiments  of  general  utility,  so  as  to  prevent  use- 
less reduplications  of  research.  Thus,  in  Mysore,  experiments 
were  carried  on  with  respect  to  ragi,  paddy,  sugar-cane,  ground- 
nut, areca-nut  and  cotton,  useful  to  the  whole  State,  Demon- 
strations in  the  use  of  machinery  and  apparatus — churns, 
ploughs,  seed  drills,  etc. — would  probably  be  conducted  best  by 
Provincial  Officers.  So  also  demonstrations  of  improved  methods 
of  jaggery-making,  of  preservation  of  cattle-manure,  that,  in 
Mysore,  were  attended  by  gatherings  of  raiyats.  Lectures  and 
distribution  of  vernacular  literature  were  also  carried  on  there. 
Six  new  kinds  of  ploughs  were  introduced,  and  sold  by  the  re- 
purchase system.  Mineral  and  chemical  analyses,  mycological 
and  entomological  research  are  also  best  carried  on  at  a  well- 
equipped  Central  Institute.  But  these  divisions  will  be  settled 
by  experience.  It  is  good  to  read  that,  in  Mysore,  the  raiyats 
warmly  welcomed  the  instruction  offered. 

I  mention  these  facts  in  order  to  show  something  of  what  is 
being  done  by  Indians  for  Indians  in  an  Indian  State.  It  may 
reassure  the  timid,  and  make  them  feel  that  Home  Rule  implies 
prosperity,  and  not  catastrophe. 

Self-Goveenment  by  Compabtment 
Lately,  a  new  scheme  has  been  sprung  on  the  country,  after 
careful  preliminary  notices  and  hints  in  the  Anglo-Indian  Press. 

56 


It  is  known  as  "Self -Government  by  compartments".  It  is  eagerly- 
snatched  at  by  the  Europeans,  and  creates  a  double  set  or  author- 
ities, one  on  the  present  lines,  irresponsible  to  the  people  and 
with  control  of  the  purse,  in  which  all  real  power  is  vested;  the 
other  a  similacrum,  or  wraith,  of  a  responsible  Ministry  and  an 
elected  Assembly,  ruling  a  department,  or  departments,  of  the 
Government,  to  be  given  more  power  if  the  real  Government 
approves  of  them,  to  be  deprived  of  power  if  the  real  Govern- 
ment disapproves  of  them.  The  real  Government  can  ensure 
their  failure,  by  giving  them  such  important  departments  as 
Education  and  Sanitation,  which  need  a  very  heavy  outlay,  and 
restricting  the  funds  allowed  to  them  on  the  plea  of  necessity 
They  can  then  be  dismissed  with  contumely  as  incompetent. 
The  lesson  of  Local  Government  should  be  laid  to  heart,  for 
that  has  been  a  trial  of  a  similar  system,  in  which  officials 
have  played  the  part  of  the  real  Government  in  the  new  scheme. 
Or  the  real  Government  may  give  them  unimportant  depart- 
ments on  which  to  try  their  'prentice  hands,  so  that  failure 
may  not  matter,  and  the  country  will  be  indifferent  to  them. 
There  are  many  other  objections  to  the  scheme,  which  is  verily 
the  giving  of  a  stone  for  bread.  But  the  root  objection  is  that 
it  keeps  India  entirely  subordinate,  when  she  demands  Self- 
Government.  It  breathes  the  deep  distrust  of  Indian  capacity, 
characteristic  of  the  Bureaucracy,  and  makes  the  preposterous 
claim  that  India  is  to  remain  in  leading  strings  because  another 
Nation  claims  the  right  to  rule  her,  and  to  give  her  crumbs 
of  freedom  from  its  own  well-spread  table.  It  is  the  negation 
of  every  principle  which  Britain  and  her  Allies  have  proclaimed 
in  the  face  of  the  world.  The  Congress  has  asked  for  a  definite 
scheme  of  Reforms;  it  can  be  satisfied  with  nothing  less  than  the 
adoption  of  their  essential  principles.  We  may  ask  for  more; 
we  cannot  ask  for  less.  Nations  go  forward,  not  backward  in 
their  struggle  for  Freedom. 

Deputation 

If,  as  I  suppose,  you  will  send  a  Deputation  to  England,  to 
discuss  the  actual  Statute  which  will  have  to  be  passed  in  Par- 
liament to  give  effect  to  the  Scheme,  you  would  do  well  to  give 
them  a  mandate  to  stand  unflinchingly  by  the  essential  prin- 
ciples of  the  scheme:  the  substantial  majority  in  the  Supreme 
and  Provincial  Legislative  Councils,  and  the  power  of  the  purse. 
If  these  are  not  granted,  further  discussion  is  useless;  if  they 
are,  then  we  CFfn  discuss  subsidiary  matters. 

If  such  a  Dtputation  be  sent,  we  must  agitate  strongly  and 
steadily  here  in  support  of  it.  It  is  said  that  the  battle  of 
India  is  to  be  fought  in  Britain.  In  the  sense  that  we  must 
put  our  demands  clearly  before  Britain,  that  is  true.     But  the 

56 


real'  battle  must  be  fought  here,  for  Britain  will  naturally 
limit  her  legislation  to  that  which  India  strongly  demands. 
The  great  Labour  party  will  help  us  with  its  votes,  but  we  must 
show,  by  our  attitude  here,  that  we  are  determined  to  win 
our  Freedom. 

Vernacular 

There  is  also  much  work  to  do  in  helping  the  people  to  pre- 
pare themselves  for  the  new  powers  which  will  be  placed  in 
their  hands.  And  for  this,  the  work  must  be  done  in  the  ver- 
naculars of  each  Province,  as  only  by  their  mother-tongue  can 
the  heart  and  brain  of  the  masses  be  reached. 

Sooner  or  later,  preferably  sooner.  Provinces  will  have  to  be 
re-delimited  on  a  linguistic  basis.  The  official  languages,  for  a 
time,  will  have  to  be  two,  the  Vernacular  and  English,  as  in 
some  parts  of  Canada,  French  and  English  are  used.  Only 
then  will  the  masses  be  able  to  take  their  full  share  in  public 
life. 

The  New  Objective 

Wtiat  is  to  be  our  new  Objective? 

We  have  to  formulate  a  scheme  to  carry  out  the  third  part  of 
the  Congress  Resolution;  we  can  do  this  only  so  far  as  British 
India  is  concerned:  (i)  The  place  of  the  Indian  States  will 
have  to  be  considered  by  the  United  Kingdom  in  the  light 
of  the  treaties  existing  between  the  Paramount  Power  and  the 
Princes.  So  far  as  British  India  is  concerned,  we  have  to  see 
that  no  arrangement  is  to  come  affecting  it,  which  admits  to 
any  voice  in  our  Councils  any  Prince  who  retains  absolute 
power  within  his  own  State,  or  who  is  not  ruling  on  lines  sim- 
ilar to  those  adopted  within  British  India.  Nor  must  any 
have  authority  in  British  India,  which  is  not  also  possessed 
over  his  State  hy  British  India.  (ii)  With  regard  to  any 
Central  Imperial  Authority,  whatever  it  may  be,  India  must 
have  a  position  commensurate  with  her  importance  in  the  Em- 
pire, otherwise  she  will  be  ruled  by  the  United  Kingdom  and  the 
Dominions  in  all  Imperial  matters,  and  may  be  turned  into  a 
plantation,  with  her  industrial  development  strangled.  If,  as 
is  suggested,  the  War  Council  should  evolve  into  the  Central 
Authority,  then  its  powers  should  be'  confined  to  questions  of 
Imperial  Defence.  No  other  question  should  be  introduced  with- 
out being  referred  to  the  Self-Governing  Nations  composing 
the  Empire,  and,  if  one  Nation  objects  to  it,  the  question  must 
remain  excluded.  Each  such  Nation  must  exercise  complete 
control  over  its  own  tariff  and  fiscus — as  indeed  the  present 
Dominions  now  exercise  it — subject  to  a  charge  for  Imperial 
Defence. 

The  visit  to  India  of  the  Chief  Secretary  of  State  makes  it 

57 


necessary  that  we  should  formulate  very  definitely  what  we 
demand.  For  it  is  now  clear  that  legislation  is  on  the  anvil, 
and  we  must  take  Mr.  Bonar  Law's  advice  and  strike  while  the 
iron  is  hot. 

With  regard  to  our  New  Objective,  I  suggest  that  we  should 
ask  the  British  Government  to  pass  a  Bill  during  1918  establish- 
ing Self-Government  in  India  on  the  lines  resembling  those  of 
the  Commonwealth  of  Australia  to  come  into  force  at  the  date 
laid  down  therein,  preferably  1923,  at  the  latest  1928,  inter- 
mediate five  or  ten  years  being  occupied  with  the  transference 
of  Government  from  British  to  Indian  hands,  maintaining  Brit- 
ish ties  as  in  the  Dominions.  Transference  may  be  made  in 
stages,  beginning  with  some  such  scheme  as  that  of  the  Con- 
gress-League, with  its  widened  electorate,  the  essentials  being 
half  the  Executive  Councils  being  elected  by  elected  members  of 
legisuatures,  the  control  of  the  purse  and  a  substantial  majority 
in  the  Supreme  and  Provincial  Councils.  "We  asked  first  for 
the  representation  which  was  supposed  to  give  influence.  This 
has  proved  useless.  Now  we  ask  for  partnership  in  the  governing 
of  India — the  Government  to  have  power  of  dissolution  and.veto, 
the  people  to  have  the  power  of  the  purse.  This  is  the  second 
stage  in  the  partnership  of  equal  co-operation.  The  third  stage 
will  be  that  of  complete  Home  Rule  to  come  automatically  in 
1923  or  1928. 

The  Seceetaby  of  State  for  India 

The  year  1917  will  ever  remain  memorable  in  Indian  history 
for  the  sudden  change  in  the  policy  of  Great  Britain  towards 
India.  The  swiftness  of  the  change  is  marvellous,  almost  in- 
credible even  to  us  who  have  striven  for  it.  On  August  20th, 
the  first  demand  of  last  year's  Congress  was  granted  in  sub- 
stance though  not  in  form;  we  asked  for  a  Royal  Proclamation, 
because  that  was  the  most  gracious  and  impressive  form  and 
would  have  made  our  Emperor  yet  more  popular;  we  have 
been  given  an  announcement  by  the  Cabinet  of  Great  Britain, 
representing  the  Royal  Will. 

The  Right  Hon.  the  Secretary  of  State  is  now  among  us, 
with  other  well-known  public  men  from  the  United  Kingdom. 
At  this  stage,  nought  can  be  said  of  the  outcome  of  the  visit. 
But  I  may  rightly  place  on  record  the  fact  that  free  and  full 
speech  has  been  granted  to  India's  representatives,  with  friendly 
and  patient  hearing  from  H.  E.  the  Viceroy  and  from  Mr.  Mon- 
tagu. 

There  has  been  no  shutting  out  of  opinions  hostile  to  the 
present  bureaucratic  system  of  Government,  for  Lokamanya 
Tilak,  Mahatma  Gandhi,  and  I  myself  were  severally  granted 
full  hearing;   similar  liberty  was  given  to  prominent  members 

58 


of  the  Congress  and  Muslim  League.     The  Home  Rule  Leagues 
were  treated  equally  well. 

The  outcome  is  on  the  lap  of  the  Gods.  We  know  the  strength 
of  the  vested  interests  opposed  to  us,  but  we  have  faith  in  the 
Justice  of  God,  and  in  the  friendliness  of  all  Britons  who  are 
true  to  the  traditions  of  their  country.  The  wish  of  organised 
labour  in  Great  Britain  to  exchange  fraternal  delegates  with 
the  Congress  and  Home  Rule  Leagues  is  a  sign  of  the  new 
Brotherhood  between  the  British  and  Indian  Democratics.  The 
Home  Rule  Leagues  have  appointed  Mr.  Baptista  as  their  frater- 
nal delegate  to  the  Annual  Labour  Conference  next  month,  and 
Major  Graham  Pole  comes  to  us  from  them.  I  trust  that  the 
Congress  will  also  nominate  its  fraternal  delegates  to  the 
Labour  Conference,  and  welcome  its  messenger  to  us,  and  that 
a  link  will  thus  be  formed  which  will  draw  closer  together 
the  United  Kingdom  and  India.  For  this,  as  well  as  for  the  com- 
ing of  the  Secretary  of  State  to  India,  will  1917  be  marked  as 
a  red-letter  year. 

OuB  Interned  Brothers 
It  is  with  deep  sorrow  that  we  record  the  non-release  of  the 
Muslim  leaders,  Muhammad  All  and  Shaukat  Ali.  For  three- 
and-a-quarter  long  years  they  have  been  withdrawn  from  public 
life,  and  condemned  to  the  living  death  of  internment.  To  high- 
spirited  and  devoted  patriots,  no  punishment  could  be  more  gall- 
ing and  more  exasperating.  Even  had  they  sinned  deeply  the 
penalty  has  been  paid,  and  we,  who  believe  in  their  innocence 
and  honour  them  for  their  fidelity  to  their  religion,  can  only 
lay  at  their  feet  the  expression  of  our  affectionate  admiration, 
and  our  assurance  that  their  long-drawn-out  suffering  will  be 
transmuted  into  power,  when  the  doors  are  thrown  open  to 
them,  and  they  receive  the  homage  of  the  Nation. 

Our  Divisions 

Many  observers  of  Indian  public  life  have  noted  the  fissiparous 
tendency  in  our  political  associations,  and  reactionaries  make 
this  a  reason  for  denying  to  us  constitutional  liberty.  Rightly  con- 
sidered it  is  a  reason  for  granting  it,  though  to  some  this  state- 
ment may  seem  paradoxical.    But  what  is  the  position? 

We  have  a  Nation,  composed  of  many  communities  and  opin- 
ions, trying  to  obtain  liberty.  We  have,  above  it,  a  Government, 
holding  all  power  and  all  patronage,  and  able  to  crush  by 
Executive  Orders  those  whom  it  considers  to  be  advocates  of 
excessive  changes.  It  tends  to  ally  itself  with  any  party  or 
community  which  will  help  it  to  stave  off  legislation  that  dimin- 
ishes its  powers.  Its  natural  tendency  is  to  watch  for  any  sign 
of  fission,  and  to  ally  itself  with  the  weaker  party  to  crush 
the  stronger,  as  did  the  East  India  Company  in  its   so-called 

59 


"conquest  of  India."  If  there  be  no  sign  of  fission,  it  may  be 
possible  to  initiate  one,  on  the  lines  of  the  despatch  to  Lord 
Lytton  when  Viceroy  of  India  with  regard  to  a  desired  War: 
"If  there  be  no  pretext,  you  must  invent  one."  A  similar 
policy  was  followed  when  Dadabhai  Naoroji  was  sent  to  the 
British  Parliament;  Mr.  Bhownagri  was  set  up  against  him, 
and  succeeded  in  ousting  a  strong  reformer  and  replacing  him 
by  a  reactionery.  No  political  situation  could  be  more  un- 
healthy. 

First,  take  the  two  great  communities  of  Hindus  and  Musal- 
mans.  They  form  two  natural  parties  in  the  Nations,  with  the 
Christian  Government  above  them  as  the  third  party  for  whose 
favour  they  compete.  Hence  Hindu  Musalman  divisions,  riots 
and  the  rest — which  do  not  exist  in  Indian  States,  wherein  the 
Ruler  belongs  to  one  of  the  two  great  religions,  and  has  to 
rule  men  of  both — and  the  constant  efforts  to  dissolve  the 
Entente  Cordiale  arrived  at  after  long  discussion  at  Calcutta 
and  at  Lucknow  last  year. 

There  will  always  be  a  number  in  each  community  who  do 
not  feel  themselves  bound  by  any  agreement  come  to  by  the  or- 
ganised political  bodies,  containing  the  more  reasonable  and 
far  seeing  of  each  community;  and  these  again,  motived  by 
bribe  or  threat,  unofficial  but  made  by  officials,  an  unorganised 
and  irresponsible  crowd,  will  always  land  recruits  to  support 
the  Government,  in  the  hope  of  obtaining  special  concessions 
for  their  sectional  interests. 

Hence,  also,  the  anti-Brahmana  movement  in  the  Madras  Presi- 
dency, v/ith  its  Association  of  a  few  hundred  members  and 
its  three  organs  in  the  Press.  It  is  now  happily  obscured  by  a 
real  non-Brahmana  Association,  the  Madras  Presidency  Asso- 
ciation, led  by  the  veteran  leaders,  Dewan  Bahadur  P.  Kesava 
Pillai,  and  already  many  thousands  strong.  The  anti-Brahmana 
movement  aims  chiefly  at  places  in  the  administration,  and  hopes 
to  gain  them  more  easily  by  praising  the  Government  and  op- 
posing Home  Rulers.  * 

Hence,  also,  various  similar  movements  in  other  Provinces, 
any  stick  being  good  enough  for  beating  the  Home  Rule  dog. 

There  is  no  need  for  anxiety  about  these  divisions,  which 
must  alvrays  present  kaleidoscopic  changes,  so  long  as  India 
is  under  the  rule  of  an  irresponsible  Government. 

When  the  third,  non-National  party,  no  longer  governs,  the 
National  parties  will  become  grouped  into  healthy  constituents 
of  the  body  politic,  distinguished  by  differences  of  principle. 
The  use  of  power  will  create  a  sense  of  responsibility,  and 
responsibility  will  bring  about  reasonable  discipline. 

We  make  too  much  of  these  transitory  difficulties  and  quar- 
rels, and  give  them  an  importance  far  beyond  their  real  mis- 

60 


chi6f-making   power.     They   will   assume   their   proper   propor- 
tions when  we  have  won  Home  Rule. 

Isolated  Refobms 

I  do  not  propose  to  dwell  on  the  isolated  Reforms  for  which 
the  Congress  has  asked  during  the  whole  period  of  its  existence. 
A  list  of  the  more  important  ones  will  be  found  as  Appendix  V. 
The  majority  of  Congresssmen  are  tired  of  asking  for  the  same 
thing  over  and  over  again,  and  feel  that  it  is  better  to  con- 
centrate on  Home  Rule,  since,  once  the  people  have  power,  they 
can  get  rid  of  bad  laws  and  make  good  ones  for  themselves. 

Indian  Legislatures  will  take  up  the  Congress  Resolutions, 
and  carry  into  law  all  that  are  applicable  to  the  changed  con- 
ditions. Free  India  will  separate  Executive  from  Judicial  func- 
tions, and  also  separate  Revenue  Officers,  Judiciary  and  Police, 
place  the  lower  Judiciary  under  the  High  Court  instead  of  the 
Executive,  pass  Education  Acts,  make  trial  by  Jury  general, 
protect  her  Emigrants  and  Indians  settled  abroad,  deal  with 
Land  Settlement  equitably,  organise  and  develop  Indian  Indus- 
tries, examine  for  her  Services  within  her  own  borders,  re- 
organise her  administration  so  as  to  abolish  racial  inequalities, 
and  establish  Military  Colleges  to  fit  her  youth  for  Emperor's 
Commissions. 

The  whole  of  the  special  legislation  against  constitutional 
agitation — as  understood  in  Great  Britain — penalising  writing 
and  speech  which  do  not  incite  to  crime  nor  transgress  the 
law  of  libel,  will  be  swept  away,  as  unworthy  of  a  civilispd 
country.  The  Executive  will  be  deprived  of  the  power  to  punish 
without  trial,  to  imprison,  incarcerate,  impoverish,  deport,  intern 
and  extern,  on  secret  police  accusations  and  suspicions  and  con- 
fidential reports  of  magistrates.  No  man  shall  thus  suffer 
without  knowing  his  offence,  nor  be  deprived  of  liberty  without 
open  trial  and  full  opportunity  of  defence.  Peaceful  political 
propaganda,  processions,  flags  and  meetings  will  not  be  inter- 
fered with  by  Magistrates  and  Police  Officers.  In  fact,  India 
will  once  more  enjoy  the  ordinary  elementary  human  rights 
secured  by  Magna  Charta  and  the  Bill  of  Rights. 

Think  of  the  joy  of  being  a  free  man  in  a  free  country,  the 
equal  of  other  civilised  men;  of  breathing  in  an  India  at  last 
purged  of  the  poisonous  atmosphere  of  coercion;  of  knowing 
that  liberty  of  person  and  safety  of  property  cannot  be  touched 
save  by  open  trial;  that  one  cannot  become  a  criminal  uncon- 
sciously and  at  the  whim  of  an  Executive,  shrouded  in  dark- 
ness; that  one  enjoys  the  ordinary  liberty  of  a  civilised  human 
being  in  a  country  ruled  by  law  alone,  uninterfered  with  by 
arbitrary  Executive  Orders.  That  security  can  only  come  to  us 
with  Home  Rule. 


Conclusion 

Fellow-Delegates:  Pardon  me  that  I  have  kept  you  so  long. 
Only  once  in  my  life  can  I  take  this  Congress  Chair,  and  speak 
my  heart  out  to  you  on  this  country  that  we  love  so  well. 
Who  can  tell,  in  the  present  keen  strife,  if  I  shall  be  left  free 
to  speak  to  you  again,  to  work  with  you  as  your  leader,  during 
this  coming  year  of  office.  If  I  am  allowed  to  carry  on  my  work 
then  I  crave  your  help  during  the  coming  year.  You  have  trusted 
me  enough  to  elect  me  as  your  President;  trust  me  enough 
to  work  with  me  as  your  President,  until  I  prove  false  to  your 
trust.  You  cannot  always  agree  with  me,  and  I  do  not  shrink 
from  your  criticism.  I  only  ask  you  not  to  take  for  granted 
the  truth  of  everything  said  against  me  by  my  enemies,  for  I 
cannot  spare  time  to  answer  them.  I  cannot  promise  to  please 
you  always,  but  I  can  promise  to  strive  my  best  to  serve  the 
Nation,  as  I  judge  of  service.  I  cannot  promise  to  agree  with 
and  to  follow  you  always;  the  duty  of  a  leader  is  to  lead. 
While  he  should  always  consult  his  colleagues  and  listen  to  their 
advice,  the  final  responsibility  before  the  public  must  be  his, 
and  his,  therefore,  the  final  decision.  A  general  should  see  fur- 
ther than  his  officers  and  his  army,  and  cannot  explain,  while 
battles  are  going  on,  every  move  in  a  campaign;  he  is  to  be 
justified  or  condemned  by  his  results.  Up  till  now,  knowing 
myself  to  be  of  this  Nation  only  by  love  and  service,  not  by 
birth,  I  have  claimed  no  authority  of  leadership,  but  have  only 
fought  in  the  front  of  the  battle  and  served  as  best  I  might. 
Now,  by  your  election,  I  take  the  place  which  you  have  given, 
and  will  strive  to  fill  it  worthily. 

Enough  of  myself.  Let  us  think  of  the  Mother. 

To  see  India  free,  to  see  her  hold  up  her  head  among  the 
Nations,  to  see  her  sons  and  daughters  respected  everywhere, 
to  see  her  worthy  of  her  mighty  Past,  engaged  in  building  a 
yet  mightier  Future — is  not  this  worth  working  for,  worth 
suffering  for,  worth  living  and  worth  dying  for?  Is  there  any 
other  land  which  evokes  such  love  for  her  spirituality,  such 
admiration  for  her  literature,  such  homage  for  her  valour,  as 
this  glorious  Mother  of  Nations,  from  whose  womb  went  forth 
the  races  that  now,  in  Europe  and  America,  are  leading  the 
world?  And  has  any  land  suffered  as  our  India  has  suffered, 
since  her  sword  was  broken  on  Kurukshetra,  and  the  peoples  of 
Europe  and  of  Asia  swept  across  her  borders,  laid  waste  her 
cities,  and  discrowned  her  Kings.     They  came  to  conquer,  but 

62 


they  remained  to  be  absorbed.  At  last,  out  of  those  mingled 
peoples,  the  Divine  Artificer  has  welded  a  Nation,  compact  not 
only  of  her  own  virtues,  but  also  of  those  her  foes  had  brought 
to  her,  and  gradually  eliminating  the  vices  which  they  had  also 
brought. 

After  a  history  of  millennia,  stretching  far  back  out  of  the 
ken  of  mortal  eye;  having  lived  with,  but  not  died  with,  the 
mighty  civilisations  of  the  Past;  having  seen  them  rise  and 
flourish  and  decay,  until  only  their  sepulchres  remained,  deep 
buried  in  earth's  crust;  having  wrought,  and  triumphed  and 
suffered,  and  having  survived  all  changes  unbroken;  India, 
who  has  been  verily  the  Crucified  among  Nations,  now  stands 
on  this  her  Resurrection  morning,  the  Immortal,  the  Glorious, 
the  Ever  Young;  and  India  shall  soon  be  seen,  proud  and  self- 
reliant,  strong  and  free,  the  radiant  Splendour  of  Asia,  as  the 
Light  and  the  Blessing  of  the  World. 

Feom  the  Pbesident  of  the  National  Congress  to  the  People 

OF  Indla. 

Beothebs  and  Sisters: — We  are  living  in  a  time  when  great 
changes  are  being  made  all  over  the  world.  And,  as  a  result, 
methods  are  adopted  which  have  the  heroic  simplicity  and  direct- 
ness of  the  elder  times.  Our  Viceroy,  the  Representative  of  our 
beloved  King-Emperor,  remembering  his  Sovereign's  words  that 
sympathy  was  lacking  in  the  Indian  administration,  has  come 
out  from  his  aloof  isolation,  and,  like  an  ancient  King,  is  trav- 
elling around  these  Immense  dominions,  to  discover  for  him- 
self what  the  people  want.  And  with  him  comes  from  far-off 
Britain  a  special  Messenger  from  the  Throne  itself,  one  of  His 
Majesty's  Ministers,  to  bring  us  the  Emperor's  Love  and  Justice: 
Love,  that  shall  win  us  to  forget  what  we  have  suffered;  Justice, 
that  shall  offer  to  us  the  Rights  which  other  Peoples  have  had 
to  wrench  by  force  from  the  fists  of  Sovereigns  less  wise,  and 
less  observant  of  the  high  Dharma  of  a  Nation's  Ruler. 

What  does  this  Justice  mean  to  the  highly  educated  classes  of 
the  Indian  people?  It  means  that  they  will  have  power  placed  in 
their  hands  to  carry  out  the  resolutions  which  they  have  been 
passing  in  the  National  Congress  for  three-and-thirty  years.  They 
will  pass  an  Elementary  Education  Bill  which,  in  the  words  of  the 
Japanese  Emperor,  will  leave  no  ignorant  family  in  a  village,  no. 
ignorant  member  in  a  family.  They  will  so  deal  with  the  tarifs 
that  the  bounties  given  exclusively  to  India  by  Nature  will  bring 
to  her  from  foreign  nations  the  wealth  she  needs  to  improve  her 
own  people,  for  the  advantages  given  by  Nature  should  fall  back 
upon  the  people  as  fertilising  rain  on  the  parched  field.  They  will 
abolish  the  coercive  legislation  which  has  been  invented  to  crush 
out  expressions  of  righteous  discontent,  discontent  due  to  the 

63 


wrong  methods  and  mistakes  inevitable  under  the  rule  of  a 
foreign  bureaucracy,  alien  in  language,  customs,  habits,  from  the 
people  whom  they  rule.  To  the  highly  educated  classes.  Justice 
means  heavy  responsibility  and  strenuous  exertion,  with  the  joy 
of  rendering  happy  and  prosperous  the  people  from  whom  they 
have  sprung,  the  relatives  in  hundreds  of  thousands  of  villages  in 
which  their  ancient  families  have  lived  for  uncounted  generations. 
"Born  of  the  people,  how  should  they  not  serve  the  people?"  for 
India  has  no  classes,  separated  from  each  other  by  dividing  gulfs, 
such  as  exist  in  the  West  between  the  noble  in  the  castle  and  the 
peasant  in  the  cottage. 

What  does  Justice  mean  to  the  active,  out-of-door  class,  the 
class  that,  if  poor,  now  goes  into  the  Army  and  the  Police  or,  if 
noble,  would  go  into  them  if  they  offered  a  career  to  Indians,  the 
inborn  warrior  class,  that  is  restless  and  discontented,  because  its 
surging  energies  seek  action?  To  them,  often  now  the  "naughty 
boys"  of  families,  it  opens  up  a  career  suited  to  them,  in  an 
Indian  Army  and  Navy  and  Police,  composed  of  Indians  and 
officered  by  Indians,  in  which  the  bravest  and  the  best  disciplined, 
showing  powers  of  leadership,  shall  have  an  open  road  to  the 
highest  posts  of  command,  the  very  qualities  which  now  cause  dis- 
turbance being  yoked  to  service  of  the  motherland,  her  protectors 
against  foreign  aggression,  her  guardians  against  disorder  within. 

What  does  Justice  mean  to  the  merchant  class?  It  means 
markets  in  which  wealth  shall  repay  exertion,  in  which  Lakshmi 
Devi,  the  Angel  of  Plenty,  shall  crown  the  labours  of  her  ser- 
vants. The  class  which  guides  and  co-ordinates  industry  gath- 
ering together  its  products  and  distributing  them  over  India 
and  over  the  whole  world,  which  shall  welcome  into  its  ranks 
the  shrewd  brains  and  keen  insight  scattered  over  India,  like 
jewels  embedded  in  matrices  of  lesser  value — this  class  shall 
be  the  steward  and  distributors  of  the  wealth  of  the  Nation, 
the  backbone  of  National  prosperity.  Into  it  shall  flow,  of  those 
whose  inborn  talent  fit  them  for  this  great  branch  of  National 
Service,  on  which  more  perhaps,  than  on  any  other,  the  gen- 
eral prosperity  of  Nations  ever  depends. 

What  does  justice  mean  to  the  huge  masses  of  the  people, 
now  toiling  without  hope,  and  suffering  without  relief,  the  masses 
who  now  labor  that  others  may  enjoy,  who  create  wealth  which 
they  do  not  share,  the  producers,  whether  of  food,  or  of  articles 
of  necessary  use,  or  of  pleasure?  They  see  the  food  stream 
outwards  while  their  families  are  left  hungry,  the  products  of 
their  hands  going  to  others  while  their  cottages  are  void  of 
comfort.  To  them  Justice  means  that  the  laborers'  food  and 
seed  for  the  next  sowing  shall  be  the  first  charges,  on  the 
crops  his  toil  has  raised;  that  the  Panchayat  shall  be 
re-established,  so  that  he  shall  manage  his  own  village  busi- 
ness;   that  the  village   officials  shall   again   be  village   servants 

64 


instead  of  village  tyrants;  that  he  shall  have  replaced  in  his 
village  the  village  school,  teaching  his  boys  and  girls  that  they 
may  become  more  clever  and  useful  in  village  life;  and  that 
any  boy  or  girl  cleverer  than  others  may  be  able  to  go  on  to 
higher  schools,  a  way  being  opened  also  from  these  to  the  Uni- 
versity, less  painful  and  hard  than  that  now  existing. 

For  what  is  Justice?  It  is  giving  to  every  man  his  birthright, 
and  that  birthright  is  Freedom,  Swaraj,  Home  Rule. 

Friends,  will  you  work  with  my  colleagues  and  myself  to 
win  this  Home  Rule,  which  will  make  India  happy  within  her 
own  borders,  and  great  among  the  Nations  of  the  world?  Will 
you  not  work  with  us  for  your  own  liberty,  and  for  the  liberty 
of  your  children  after  you?  India  is  linked  with  Great  Britain 
by  the  good  Will  of  God,  who  would  knit  East  and  West  together 
for  the  welfare  of  the  whole  world.  The  tie  is  now  a  tie  of 
force;  let  us  make  it  a  tie  of  love.  But  a  tie  of  love  can  only 
come  when  India  is  free,  a  willing  Partner  in  the  Empire,  and 
not  a  Dependency.  Stand  up  like  men;  speak  out  like  men. 
Then  shall  your  voices,  ringing  across  the  ocean,  reach  Britain, 
the  Mother  of  free  institutions  in  the  West,  and  she  greet  a 
sister  India,  the  Mother  of  free  institutions  in  the  East,  who 
sent  out  to  the  West  her  sons  and  daughters  to  build  up  free- 
dom there,  so  that  now,  together,  they  might  build  a  mighty 
Commonwealth  of  Free  Nations,  and  bring  happiness  to  man- 
kind. 

Annie  Besant. 

December,  1917. 


THEOSOPHICAL  PUBLISHING  HOUSE 

Krotona,    Holljrwood,    Los   Angeles,    Cah 

19  18 


14  DAY  USE 

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General  Library 

University  of  California 

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